In view of the aforementioned emphasis on the missionary program of the Church there was a felt need by the author, with encouragement from Ernest Eberhard Jr., of the Department of Education, to do a follow-up study to determine what effect the seminary program has had and is now having upon the lives of its graduates now in the mission field. Only the missionaries who arenow in the mission field and who are seminary graduates of four selected seminaries are used in this study. There are three major areas of seminary influence and effectiveness that this study attempts to determine. They are: (1) The effectiveness of the seminary program in influencing the missionaries to have lived the gospel in their lives before going on thier missions. (2) The influence the seminary program had on the missionaries' desires to go on missions. (3) The effectiveness of the seminary program in helping to prepare these missionaries to be more successful in their present missionary work. These findings are determined from the results of a questionnaire that was sent to each missionary.

The purpose of this study is two fold: first, to review the historical sources pertaining to the observance of fasting from the time of the establishment of the church in 1830 until 1896, when the last essential change in its observance occurred; and second, as the payment of fast offerings is so closely related to an analysis of the subject, to trace its development out of the Church's policy to provide for its poor.

The purpose of this study is to compare all the major printings of the texts of "The Book of Abraham" and the "Writings of Joseph Smith," both presently contained in "The Pearl of Great Price", to note the various changes in the texts and to evaluate the significance of those changes.

This dissertation provides a critical and constructive interpretation of “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” [NA], the sole primarily theological essay written by the logician, scientist, and philosopher C. S. Peirce (1839-1914). Despite recent scholarly attention, NA has confused its readers from its publication in 1908 until today. This dissertation interprets NA in light of: (a) Peirce’s philosophy of science and his theory of signs (semeiotic); and (b) a close reading of the published essays and unpublished manuscripts Peirce composed during the decade before NA’s publication and the six years he lived post-publication. These primary materials suggest that the key to understanding the so-called humble argument at the heart of NA is Peirce’s conviction that the universe is a divine sign. The humble argument is a recommendation that one make musement, or the playful contemplation of the universe, a daily habit. Since Peirce believed that the universe is a divine sign, he predicted that anyone who mused for forty to fifty minutes daily would eventually come to believe in God’s reality. Peirce describes the humble argument as the innermost of three nested arguments, the latter two defending the reasonableness of the humble argument. The second argument, which Peirce accuses theologians of neglecting, appeals to the instinctiveness of the idea that God is real as evidence of the truth of that idea. As stated, that argument is flawed, but it can be reformulated as an empirical prediction that intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms will tend to develop conceptions of God or Ultimate Reality. The third argument defends the reasonableness of the humble argument by construing the idea of God as arising, like scientific hypotheses, through abductive inference. Contra Peirce, this dissertation argues that, although analogous to certain abstractions that play important roles in science, the idea of God is not a valid scientific hypothesis because it entails no testable predictions. Given this lack of testable consequences, Peirce’s pragmatic defense of the meaningfulness of the idea of God is inconsistent with his pragmaticism, having more in common with William James’s individualistic interpretation of pragmatism, which Peirce had previously opposed.

<p>Skeptical theism is an important position (or set of positions) that—if true—has significant implications in the philosophy of religion regarding the epistemic status of theism and atheism. Broadly speaking, skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical about the ability of humans to discern, by certain methods, the probability of God permitting certain states of affairs. In this dissertation, I argue in favor of two types of skeptical theism and consider their implications. In Chapter 1, I explain two types of skeptical theism—Axiological Skeptical Theism and Deontological Skeptical Theism—and argue in favor of each position. I consider numerous objections to these views, arguing that they all fail. This, however, only matters if these positions have a significant upshot. Accordingly, in Chapter 2, I argue that Axiological and Deontological Skeptical Theism undermine both axiological and deontological ‘noseeum’ arguments from evil, the equiprobability argument from evil, and both axiological and deontological Humean arguments from evil. So, the upshot of Axiological and Deontological Skeptical Theism is significant. Chapter 3 considers whether Axiological and Deontological Skeptical Theism result in too much skepticism: I consider whether these views provide a defeater for our commonsense beliefs. In doing so, I consider numerous types of defeaters, arguing that neither Axiological nor Deontological Skeptical Theism provide such defeaters. In Chapter 4, I consider whether one can consistently accept both Axiological and Deontological Skeptical Theism while making predictions about how God would act—a crucial aspect of theodicy and natural theology. I argue that there are two ways that one can do so: one way involving intuition and another way involving metaethics. The way involving intuition is, I argue, narrowsince it will have a limited scope. By contrast, the way involving metaethics, I argue, has a broad scope. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the so-called commonsense problem of evil. Some philosophers have argued that the commonsense problem of evil is untouched by all types of skeptical theism. I argue that the traditional commonsense problem of evil fails, but that a revamped version of it poses more of a threat. However, I claim that the revamped argument ultimately fails as well</p>

<p>This thesis argues that Wendell Berry’s idea of a healthy community and his understanding of membership is embodied in his fiction. The imagined community of Port William is neither an ideal blueprint for instantiating a new form of collective life in modern society, nor is it a nostalgic recreation of lost rural communities for representing an alternative culture. Berry’s imagination—both the creative process and its material products—is a funding current for both analyzing North American democracy and its failings as well as cultivating pluralities of communities that address these inadequacies. The form and discipline of Berry’s imaginative engagement with the particularities of his place uncovers the divine creativity operating in it; his fictional writing incarnates his conception and experience of this divine presence as God’s kenotic love. The upshot is not a simplistic return to traditional life but rather an affectionate and self-effacing approach to nature that converges with God’s manner of creating and relating to the world as it is conceived within the Christian tradition. Berry’s moral imagination emerges from a cultural approach to Christianity that engenders people who seek out those aspects of society and moments in life that are struggles—for justice, happiness, reconciliation—in order to incarnate a loving openness to others that does not re-inscribe further failures of Western consumer culture and political economy.</p> <p>Berry’s imagined community educates the affections in order to transform the way in which we relate to one another and treat the environment. His fiction is an education in being at home in the world as it is where we find it. Rather than theorizing the structure of a locally adapted community, or offering techniques for establishing the existence of such a community, Berry shows us how to live where we are through literary biography.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This thesis looks at one example of a Bayesian argument for the existence of God in order to evaluate the quality of such arguments. It begins by explicating a general trend in philosophical apologetics towards probabilistic arguments for God's existence, most notably represented in Richard Swinburne's 2004 book, <em>The Existence of God</em>. Swinburne's arguments are presented as the pinnacle of the probabilistic movement. In order to judge the worth of such arguments, I carefully lay out the principles and assumptions upon which Swinburne's case is based. I show that his argument requires both the truth of substance dualism and the valid application of the simplicity principle to a set of possible hypotheses which purport to explain the existence of the Universe. Swinburne depends on the willingness of philosophers to accede to these points. I proceed to show that no agreement exists on the topic of dualism, concluding that Swinburne has a lot of work ahead of him if he wants this assumption to firmly support his argument. I then show that, while the simplicity principle is generally agreed to be a good tool for real-world situations, there are important differences when attempting to use it to adjudicate between hypotheses to explain the universe. The simplicity principle requires both background knowledge and a mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive set of hypotheses in order to be properly applied, both of which are here lacking. If I am right, then we will be unable to reasonably assign several values necessary in order to utilize Bayes' Theorem. Thus the Bayesian approach cannot be used for the problem of the existence of God. Finally, I show that Swinburne's own assumptions can be used to generate a different conclusion, which casts further doubt on his methodology.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>The Old Testament contains a number of depictions of a divine councilor assembly of the gods in the heavens. Several of these scenes form episodic narratives that provide a window into the divine realm and insight into the workings of the heavenly court. The closest cultural and linguistic parallel to the biblical council is found in the Ugaritic texts from Ras Shamra. The parallel members in the Old Testament are seldom considered gods by scholars, in contrast to those in the pantheon in the Ugaritic literature. This thesis calls into question the validity of this distinction and proposes that in these episodic scenes these members are deities under the presidency of YHWH. Power in the heavens is consolidated in the council permitting a view of god that is pluralistic and yet unified. YHWH is its head and he sets its agenda, announces its decisions and commissions its agents.</p> / Master of Theology (Th.M)

<p>This dissertation interprets the origins and growth of per-Restoration Quakerism through concepts developed in social-psychology and the sociology of religion. It argues that previous attempts to interpret Quakerism through psychological or mystical perspectives fail to locate the group in its socio-historical setting, and therefore these interpretations provide inadequate explanations of the group and its most prominent personality, George Fox. By utilizing, however, the social-psychological theory of "relative deprivation," the dissertation both explains the origins of Quakerism's religious ideology, and shows how its members' sense of felt deprivation determined the group's decisions about allocating economic and personal resources in an anti-tithe campaign.</p> <p>Briefly stated, the central argument of the study is that the Quakers felt frustration and resentment toward the victorious Puritans (post 1648) whom they believed had failed to implement a series of promised social and political reforms, including tithe-abolition. In fact, the 3roup emerged among religious and political radicals who felt particularly resentful over the continuation of the state-supported tithe system, and Quakerism launched a vehement campaign to have governmental officials abolish tithes at the same time that it encouraged people to withhold payment of them.</p> <p>Quakerism's anti-tithe campaign generated a number of staunch opponents, however, and the dissertation uses the concept of 11 relative deprivation" to explain their reaction to the group. These fearful opponents felt deprived relative to the social conditions that would be imposed if the Quakers were to succeed in achieving their goal of tithe-abolition, since many of them were tithe-receivers themselves.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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