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Thesis advisor: Boyd T. Coolman / The anonymous Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae from the 12th century abbey of St. Victor has often been associated with the tradition of medieval liturgical commentaries, but this dissertation proposes reading it primarily as a general treatise on the spiritual life. Its unique Victorine emphasis on the combination of intellect and affect suggests a particular theology of the sign: the real ontological status of the sign relying not on Dionysian hierarchy but on ecclesial contemplation. Through the newly developed sacramental understanding of res et sacramentum, the Speculum suggests that signs have enduring value as signs that goes beyond their function as signifiers. The attainment of the signified, in other words, is only part of their gift. Their “sweetness” is found in an appreciation of their mode of signification — a signification that, the Speculum suggests, endures somehow even in heaven as a non-necessary gracious source of delight. That is, external and visible things in the Church have value not merely because they point us to particular invisible things (what the signs “mean”) but because they teach us the Church’s economy of grace. The Church, then, and her sacramental economy, are central not just to the practical life of individual salvation, but to the meaningfulness of all creation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Boyd T. Coolman / Hugh of St. Victor impresses even the cursory reader of his great De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei with his tendency to "think in threes." Why does he do this? Is it significant? At the same time, common scholarly judgment holds that Latin theology, in focusing on the person and work of Christ, fails to give an adequate account of the Holy Spirit's role in Christian life. This accusation appears true of Hugh, whose relatively sparse references to the Spirit in, for example, the De Sacramentis are easily catalogued. After a brief introductory chapter, the second chapter of this dissertation exacerbates the problem of Hugh's relative silence about the Holy Spirit by exploring the Trinitarian resonance of his threefold thought: When one demonstrates that the terms of which many of these traids are composed either reproduce the Trinitarian relations or can be "appropriated" to Trinitarian persons, Hugh is recognized not simply as an impressively "triadic" thinker, but a resolutely "Trinitarian" one. How can so Trinitarian a thinker have such an underdeveloped pneumatology? Chapter two proceeds to discuss Hugh's use of the doctrine of appropriations, acquainting the reader with the way Hugh associates various concepts with the different members of the Trinity. The question of Hugh's threefold thought now provides an answer to the accusation of a truncated pneumatology: While Hugh's explicit mentions of the Spirit may be relatively sparse, his doctrine of the Spirit is surprisingly robust, once the pneumatic moments in the triads which structure his thought are identified and considered. The implicit nature of his pneumatology is not surprising, given his tendency to reserve the names of "Father, Son, and Spirit" to discussions of the immanent Trinity. To prepare the reader to uncover Hugh's "implicit" doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian, chapter three does the work of identifying pneumatological themes related to the human person. The second part of the inquiry, structured around Hugh's own description of his spiritual program, properly considers the role of the Holy Spirit in Christian life: One first reads and meditates, then prays, and then receives the grace to live the moral life, all in preparation for a final state of contemplation in which one enjoys the foretaste of eternal sweetness. Utilizing the above method for uncovering Hugh's implicit pneumatology, the Holy Spirit is found to be both "giver and gift" (dator et donum), advancing the believer through the first four steps while being the very gift finally received and enjoyed. Chapter four, on reading, concludes that the Spirit makes the Word's knowledge and wisdom present to the earthly reader. Chapter five examines the interplay between the Word and the Spirit in the act of prayer, in which the Spirit--who first makes the Word "incarnate" in sacramental-Scriptural and sacramental-liturgical signs--intensifies the believer's love for God through the prayerful use of these signs. Finally, chapter six demonstrates that the moral life is given by the Spirit who, in fifteen steps not explicitly attributed to the Spirit yet shown to be the work of the Spirit, makes Christ the Word incarnate present not just "in history" but in the very heart of the acting believer. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on whether the sweetness the soul now enjoys is understood as the "immanental gift" of the Spirit itself or is simply a gift appropriated to the Spirit, suggesting the former. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / This dissertation offers a new systematic interpretation and retrieval of the theology and spirituality of the 12th century master Hugh of St. Victor, an interpretation centered on the Triune LORD’s unifying and reforming work in history in the three days of Jesus Christ’s dying, burial, and rising. Seen from the vantage of Hugh’s treatise On the Three Days, these ‘three days’ of Jesus Christ’s ‘Passover’ are, for Hugh, the plenary revelation of the Trinity in history – and so an eschatological disclosure – and are at once the soteriological and spiritual center of his theology. The work of the dissertation is, in part one, to explore the objective polarity of the LORD’s work in the three days. This entails an in-depth treatment of Hugh’s christology, including the currently contested and historically misconstrued territory of Hugh’s doctrine of the hypostatic union. Moreover, the project brings out the integral connections between Hugh’s doctrine of the hypostatic union and his soteriology of the re-formation of all of history in the three days. This triadic soteriological scheme in turn correlates to three degrees of theological language and of Triune self-revelation in history. The task of part two of the dissertation is to study the subjective polarity of Spirit-enabled human participation in Christ’s dying, burial, and rising. Hugh’s spirituality and practice of theology are explored as means of human re-formation unto wonder, wisdom, and charity – in short, unto mystical and ultimately eschatological union with God – through participation in the paschal mystery. These chapters thus systematize and explore aspects of Hugh’s thought as diverse as the communal formation at the Abbey of St. Victor, humility, study of the liberal arts and memorization of Scripture, theological meditation, allegorical and tropological biblical interpretation, works of charity, and the responsive eros of Hugh’s contemplative mysticism, all as means of sharing, by turns, in Christ’s dying, burial, and rising. The third and final part of the dissertation attempts a contemporary practice of Hugonian theology. It places the Hugonian theology retrieved in parts one and two in the context of the reception of Laudato Si’ in order to offer a christological and mystical companion to Pope Francis’ encyclical. It argues that the ‘ecological conversion’ for which Pope Francis calls, as a subjective participation in Christ, implicitly depends upon a robust enough objective christology to make the summons to particularly ‘ecological’ conversion coherent and compelling. Hence the contemporary eco-christologies of Sallie McFague and Celia Deane-Drummond are studied and adjudicated. Finally, on the basis of the gains accrued in the course of those eco-christological engagements, a renewed Hugonian christology and soteriology is proposed as a framework for and aid to the spiritual and moral implementation of Laudato Si’. Ecological conversion is itself, most properly, a process of human re-formation in the three days of Jesus Christ’s Passover, and hence practical efforts to teach and implement Laudato Si’ benefit from a Hugonian theological and spiritual approach. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.