This thesis explores Gustavo Gutiérrez‟s and John Milbank‟s articulations of the doctrine of creation, with a view to developing a criterion that can be used to inform our understanding and evaluation of Christian charities that address homelessness and operate in contemporary British civil society. Milbank and Gutiérrez‟s works both ask questions of the peace or life that can be instituted through charitable practices. They also develop, from the doctrine of creation, their own theological accounts of social and political orders, normative anthropologies, and accounts of the interpersonal. For both Milbank and Gutiérrez, the doctrine of creation maintains a paradox: the internality and externality of the created world in relation to God. Part One of this thesis explores these respective accounts of charity and creation, noting the strengths and limitations of each position. Part One ends with a qualified endorsement of Gutiérrez‟s theology and defends the utility of the criterion he deploys in his work to judge the task of theology and praxis of the church: integral liberation. The second part of this thesis progresses in three steps. First, I put forward a theological methodology which is attentive to the logic of theo-political language and our current neoliberal socio-political order. I argue that it is prudent to think of political theology as a counter-hegemonic discourse, and in dialogue with Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza and Gutiérrez, I explore and endorse political theology as spiral in character. I go on to extend Laclau and Mouffe‟s analysis of neoliberalism by developing and defending the hypothesis: 'charities are dual'. By engaging with the work of Frank Prochaska, this section argues that charities are both religious and political, as well as being both internal and external to the state apparatus. Furthermore, I contend that charities constitute and ameliorate the social exclusion attributed to homelessness, and that selfless giving, under the current circumstances, is internal to a process of volunteer self-making. By attending to the dualities of homelessness charities, this part of the thesis sets charities in their current context and proposes an elective affinity between current charitable practices and the hegemony of neoliberalism. At the end of the thesis, I return to the doctrine of creation and ask how attention to this doctrinal locus can help us to move homelessness charities beyond their dependence on the existence of homeless people, and their embeddedness in our current neoliberal arrangement. I argue that charities, and civil society more broadly, have an important role to play in envisioning and establishing a theo-politics of common life. To do so, I contend that we need to articulate a robust account of the role of the state, must defend human rights, nurture egalitarian and non-hierarchical charitable practices, be attentive to what the homeless can teach charities and volunteers about our current order, and reform aspects of charitable law. In each of these cases, I defend a paradoxical politics of integral liberation. In summary, this thesis aims to make an original contribution to the growing body of literature that explores homelessness and theology by coordinating the paradox of creation, the duality of charity, and the double truths of neoliberalism.

There are times when a confluence of events, individual talent, preparation and strategic timing all meet at the same point in time which result in a historic period on the larger scale of history. Such is the life and legacy of Carl F. H. Henry. Henry was born at a strategic time in the history of the Protestant church in the United States. He possessed and developed intellectual gifts that far surpassed most of his contemporaries. He also possessed an ability to be at the momentous shifts in Christian history in the United States. This study examines, in historical context, the surrounding circumstances and the developments from those circumstances that gave rise to “the dean of evangelical theologians,” Carl Henry. Henry burst onto the theological scene while the ambers were still burning from World War II. While the world was recovering from war, Protestantism, both in the U.S. and in Europe, was recovering from a battle of its own. In the United States, the conflict between liberals and conservatives had provided deep divides in the county’s denominations. With liberals having assumed seats of power in denominational structures and institutions of higher learning, the conservatives had withdrawn both culturally and theologically. Across Europe, two world wars within one generation had significantly damaged the cardinal doctrines of liberalism. In its place, came the rise of neo-orthodoxy. While on the surface the renewed emphasis on the Bible seemed to offer great promise, the philosophical underpinnings of neo-orthodoxy would soon erode the short lived hope that a return to the foundation of scriptural authority, as expressed by the Reformers, was in the making. It was into the this milieu that Carl Henry emerged onto the scene, with the publishing of The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, as a major theological voice calling for a renunciation of the obscurantism of the fundamentalists, and a re-engagement with culture both in terms of social ministries and a renewed commitment to academic excellence. In addition to The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, which received much more recognition that the preceding volume, Remaking the Modern Mind and then the later work, The Protestant Dilemma, these two books laid out the basic theological method that Henry would follow throughout his career resulting in his magnum opus, God, Revelation and Authority. It is here that evangelicalism finds its most definitive defense of biblical authority, inspiration and inerrancy, grounded in Henry’s theological methodology—revelational epistemology. In addition to Henry’s prodigious theological output, he was instrumental in changing the theological landscape in America. Having called for the re-engagement of the culture and the mind, Henry was pivotal in the forming of several key evangelical institutions. Henry actively took part in the founding of the NAE, ETS, Fuller Seminary and Christianity Today. Henry’s legacy is cemented in his ability to articulate and formulate viable contemporary expressions to fulfill the Great Commission. His contributions to the Kingdom of God are as monumental in their breadth and scope as the King he served. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Church History and Church Policy / unrestricted

This thesis extends recent scholarly interest in the practical processes of Late Antique Roman law and on the integration of the episcopate into Roman power structures in the fourth century, the first century of imperial patronage of Christian communities. It confirms the "minimalist" model of Roman governance and provides a non-medieval example of the persecution of minorities as a contingent effect of competing claims to authority. This thesis argues that fourth-century elite Roman men disputing episcopal status via the Roman courts led to a transformation of episcopal polity, and that this development has been obscured by a subsequent paradigm shift in the norms concerning episcopal use of Roman law towards the end of that century. This paradigm shift identified by this thesis has three important aspects:1. With the change in imperial dynasty from the Valentinians to Theodosians, imperial favour moved from non-Nicene to Nicene bishops. Disparity of access to imperial favour during the fourth century required Nicene-identified bishops to invent tools to succeed in spite of their poor position. After the Theodosian-Nicene takeover, the Nicene-identified bishops retained these tools while also inheriting the legal framework that the non-Nicene bishops had crafted during their mid-century period of patronage.2. The power structures through which imperial favour was granted also changed. The typical fourth-century use of Roman law to resolve inter-episcopal disputes was different from that which would become established as a more enduring precedent in the Theodosian era. 3. The episcopal rhetoric used in claiming imperial favour changed from a focus on affirming one's own privilege to a focus on the proscription of others. The terminology of orthodox versus heretical is significant but must be understood as relational: even once heretics were proscribed by law, orthodoxy remained a status granted by the emperor. The methodology of this thesis argues for the importance of interpreting the relevant fourth-century sources in the context of their own time and norms, rather than in the light of the significantly different fifth-century practice as previous scholarship has done. This thesis first discusses two case studies before the paradigm shift: in Chapter One, Athanasius of Alexandria, as an example typical of the fourth century, and in Chapter Two, Priscillian of Avila, as an example at the cusp of the transition in the 380s who still demonstrates conformance with earlier practice. The thesis then describes the transition to the Theodosian-Nicene mode with an extended focus on Ambrose of Milan. Chapter Three shows Ambrose, contemporary with Priscillian, refusing to engage with existing episcopal legal practices and inventing a new strategy to survive the threat of Roman law. Chapter Four shows how Ambrose further refined this strategy in other conflicts and in doing so created a new place for bishops within the power structures of the Roman Empire.

The focus of the thesis is on the last supper and how that event is depicted on icons within the Eastern Orthodox Church. Two different methods have been used to study the motive: archive studies and literature studies. The motive in itself is studied from a religious perspective as well as from a gastronomical perspective. The composition of Jesus and his disciples and how they are placed around the table, which ones that have halos are studied from the religious perspective and the different kind of food elements and utensils for a meal are studied from the gastronomical perspective. The theoretical perspective combines parts of Eliade's theory of the religious man and Söderlind's theory of the gastronomical man. During the study of the icons it became clear that the food items and utensils that are depicted are markers of identity.

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / The aim of the present study was to determine whether church involvement can be conceptualized as a function of both organizational and personal factors. For the purposes of this study the psychosocial climate of the church served as an organizational factor while religious attitudes served as personal factors. A further aim of the study was to determine to what extent the church can be seen as a support system that serves as a buffer against stressors. Subjects consisted of 214 congregation members of 10 different churches that were spread out over the areas of Bellville-South, Kuilsriver and Belhar in the Cape Peninsula. Subjects completed five questionnaires: the Church climate scale (CCS), the Involvement in the church scale (ICS), the Survey of religious attitudes (SRA), a psychological well-being questionaire (RIF) and a biographical questionnaire. The relationship between the different variables were determined by means of product moment correlations, stepwise multiple regression and Chi-square analyses. The analysis of the significance of the differences between more involved and less involved church members was performed by means of Rotelling's T2 statistic. It was found that, according to the psychometric measures applied: the dimensions of the psychosocial climate of the church plays a limited role in the prediction of church insignificance as a predictor of church involvement in the final multiple regression analysis which involved all independent variables simultaneously. Orthodox religious beliefs had a positive relationship with church involvement, while inner religious conflicts had a negative relationship with church involvement. there was no relationship between church involvement and psychological well-being. orthodoxy, income, normative clarity and educational qualifications were the only significant predictors of church involvement. more involved and less involved members differed significantly and the difference between the two groups can be attributed to orthodoxy of religious beliefs. Although the results of the main investigation did not fully confirm the researcher's expectations, the intercorrelations between the different variables produced a number of interesting findings. The Church climate scale produced the following significant correlations with the other variables: ( i) "Normative clarity" correlated negatively with the experience of inner religious conflicts as well as the experience of anxiety, depression and global psychological well-being. It however correlated positively with educational qualifications. Chi-square analyses further showed that married persons, received a high level church. compared to unmarried per the persons, of "normative clarity" within "Sense of community" correlated positively with the level of religious orthodoxy and negatively with the experience of anxiety. (iii)"Social concern correlated positively with the level of religious orthodoxy as well as with sex (men percieved a higher level of social concern within the church than women) . (iv) "Openness to change" correlated positively with the level of religious orthodoxy as well as with sex (men percieved a higher level of social concern within the church than women)

Judas Iscariot has been and remains to this day one of the most hated persons in human history. The goal of this project is to examine the evolution Judas as he appears, first within the pages of the Christian canon, then moving over to literature outside the canon, into Apocrypha. Moreover, consulting ancient and modern sources allows for the ability to raise questions regarding the possibility of redemption for Judas as well as an analysis on whether this person was real or simply a literary construct by ancient authors in order to strengthen the core of the Christian belief system. With the inclusion of a clear and present villain in the narrative, the early Christians or proto-Orthodox were able to separate themselves from the initial Jewish community and labelled Judas as the ultimate example of what not to do when it came to being a “true” Christian. The discovery of the Gospel of Judas and its subsequent publication brought mainstream attention to the early years of Christianity, with its many different structures. The exploration of its pages reveal an entirely different message in which Judas Iscariot is a central figure, amidst a more “gnostic” tradition. The character of Judas Iscariot has since travelled through the centuries and it is this project’s mission to demonstrate the evolution of this character, showing how he first appears as merely one of twelve men who follow Jesus to a personification of evil. The project will also demonstrate how a possible misunderstanding of literature could have created a literary scapegoat, resulting in Judas Iscariot’s use as a tool to foster hatred and animosity towards the Jews. The end result leaves the reader with the question of whether Judas deserves absolution for his actions, who may have been an important part of God’s plan for humanity’s salvation.

abstract: On the Antichrist (CPG 3946) is an eschatological sermon historically attributed to Efrem the Syrian. Composed in Koine Greek, On the Antichrist is not an authentic Efremic sermon but is attributed to the construct Greek Efrem, often called in the literature ‘Ephraem Graecus’. Sometime around the 12th century, Slavic Christians translated the work into Old Church Slavonic. As its goal, this study employs On the Antichrist to investigate how religions (e.g. Christianity) employ religio-cultural constructs and either refine, or redefine, them for new audiences and circumstances. To accomplish this, the author transcribes and translates one of the most important manuscript witnesses of this sermon (labelled Ov1), translates it, compares it with other early witnesses, and analyzes the differences between the Greek and OCS versions of the text in order to ascertain the variations in the versions and to posit why such variations might have arisen in the transmission of this sermon. Finally, the critical edition is interrogated to propose a date of the autographic text-form of On the Antichrist to the 6th to 8th centuries. This dissertation finds that multiple recensions of the sermon evolved from the earliest recension, the A Recension. The Old Church Slavonic recension of On the Antichrist falls squarely within the A Recension and seems to share a common ancestral tradition with the other A Recension manuscripts and help to reconstruct the early history of On the Antichrist. Thus, this dissertation provides one necessary step in preparation for the difficult task of preparing a critical edition of this sermon. The sermon draws heavily upon 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Little Apocalypse. Two manuscripts overtly indicate multiple meters for the sermon, but two others only hint at such divisions, and the nature of the meters (Aramaic or Byzantine) is uncertain. The sermon itself references no datable historical events. The Greek of the sermon analyzing to a Late Koine/Early Byzantine cusp language datable to between the 6th to 8th centuries. For all the uncertainties and puzzles this sermon presents, the evidence clearly points to at least one conclusion: Efrem the Syrian (d.373) cannot have authored this work, and there is no way currently to ascertain the author. Finally, this dissertation adduces an argument that Byzantine and Slavic Christians preserved On the Antichrist because of its emphasis upon humility and penitence, which allowed for the sermon to be incorporated into Orthodox liturgy by the 10th century. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2019

This thesis weighs the merits of "rhetorical" and "dialectical" theological responses to the history of western thought as a history of objectification. Objectification is theologically relevant insofar as it can be shown to be the root of modern and postmodern "suspicion" of religion. In modernity's predictable temporal economy, the human being is not a true "agent" in history, but the object of a spatialized logic of determining causes. And postmodernism's acute sensitivity to temporality as unpredictable "flux" nonetheless implies that the human being as agent is "sacrificed" at each successive moment to an arbitrary measure of difference. What is ruled out in both cases is the Christian supposition that the true form of creation is not a "thing" but a "way," a way whose temporal articulation may be analogous to the eternal "differentiation" of the Trinitarian God. This diagnosis is derived from the theology of John Milbank and "Radical Orthodoxy," which suggests in addition that only a theological "rhetoric" can safeguard the human being from objectification, in that rhetoric does not tempt the subject to define himself or herself as a "thing," but "persuades" that subject into becoming a self only by living the mysterious movement of caritas. This thesis first of all clarifies the little noticed Kierkegaardian heritage implicit in Radical Orthodoxy's "existential" imperative to rhetoric. But ultimately it argues that Kierkegaard's account of love, which refuses to appeal to a "hope" that is authenticated by any rhetorical exemplars, more adequately captures the Radical Orthodox imperative to Christianity as an existential way than does any rhetorical appeal. On my reading, Kierkegaard offers an account of love as giving rise to a unique mode of expectancy- a comportment to the future as the possibility of the good-which keeps the subject eternally in motion through faith's inexplicable resolve. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Etty Hillesum's brief life met its tragic end at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1943, when she was just 29 years old, where, along with her family, she was brutally murdered by the Nazis. Luckily for us, though, she managed to leave behind a remarkably rich body of work, composed over the course of merely three years (1941-1943), which has moved – and bewildered – readers and scholars alike ever since its first publication in 1986. The 'problem', however, from a purely theological point of view, has been how (or if) one should interpret these mystical notebooks. This study aims to investigate the 'implicit author' in the text (and thus not necessarily Etty Hillesum herself) from a Christian, Orthodox perspective, with the intention of seeing how the Orthodox understanding of 'deification', θέωσις, comes to expression in it; and in so doing to see what the text, in turn, can teach us about the notion in question. This 'dialectical' approach is characteristic of the investigation. The study seeks to situate itself both (1) in the wider discussion on Etty Hillesum's life and work, where it hopes to bring new and constructive perspectives on how one can interpret her texts, and (2) in the field of Christian, Orthodox research. This latter field of study is fairly young and evolving, and it is my hope to be able to contribute to it, be it ever so little. The result shows that in order to grasp a notion in its entirety, and in order for it to become real in an ontological sense, it must first of all take root in a particular individual; and in the case of the text in question, where the author tries to come to grips with a nearly incomprehensible evil, the notion of 'Theosis' can be seen in many ways; in her emphasis on the personal over and above the social; in her ethical pursuit of 'helping God'; and in her reluctance to adhere to any 'organised religion' – although this, as I hope to show, can be interpreted as a 'Christian' inspiration.

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