The thesis contends that preaching is the Church's paradigmatic missionary public speech in engaging political debate. This is the result of a sustained engagement with the political theology of Oliver O'Donovan and Bernd Wannenwetsch. The thesis aims to open up the promise inherent in political theology for cross-subdisciplinary conversation and mutual benefit to the theological fields of missiology and homiletics.

This dissertation is an inquiry into the relationship between political theology and the philosophical effort to establish a secular and autonomous order in which individuals govern themselves through universal laws. I argue that this project fails and explore how political theologies arise in its wake. In chapter 1, I argue that Kant's philosophy stages a 'trial of reason' to establish the authority and autonomy of reason. To succeed, Kant must give an account of judgement as the reconciliation the universal and the individual. However, the trial of reason suffers two fates: Either legal procedure is flouted the new order is established through a violent act, or the verdict is deferred, and reason's laws are legitimised by referring to an ideal of autonomy that never arises. In both cases, something is sacrificed to support rational order. In chapter 2, I show how F.W.J. Schelling responds to an autonomous and secular order by developing a political theology in which only the Church holds the key to a non-violent judgement. I then argue, in chapter 3, that Carl Schmitt develops his political theology in response to a liberal formalism which hides the sacrifices that sustain political and rational order. Here political theology springs out of the realisation that political and rational judgements always demand a sacrifice. In chapter 4, I discuss the work of Giorgio Agamben, who seeks to suspend political and rational judgement altogether. Both the political and the religious is characterised by the same 'sacred' logic which sustains an omnipotent, but unaccountable power of judgement. Finally, in chapter 5, I discuss the work of G.W.F. Hegel to show how the trial of reason depends on two conflicting accounts of secularisation. I end with raising some critical questions about the trial, and the political theologies that arise in its wake.

In this thesis I have provided a critique of the stream of contractarian liberalism which finds its source in the work of John Locke, tracing its influence through the French Revolution and into our own era in the work of the contemporary liberal theorist John Rawls. I have drawn particular attention to the substantive and methodological assumptions which unify these three instantiations of the contractarian tradition. I have challenged this stream of liberalism by offering an exposition of the thought of Edmund Burke. During the course of the thesis I have looked at the central themes which characterised Burke's thought, drawing particular attention to Burke's understanding of the British constitution, common law and his regard for the institutional church. Secondly, I have analysed the theological content of Burke's political thought, demonstrating that Burke's political thought emerged from his Christian faith and his concomitant belief in the natural law. I have argued that, as a result, there is a profound consonance between the central principles of the Christian faith and the conservative tradition which followed Burke. In the course of this argument I have defended the natural law school of Burkean scholarship and presented a clear link between Burke and the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Thirdly, I have unearthed some of the theological convictions which were historically resident in the British legal tradition that informed Burke's thought and I have shown how these assumptions run counter to the central ideas of the contractarian tradition. I have concluded by arguing that there are specifiable aspects of contractarian liberalism which should be treated with suspicion by Christians.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / The Commedia begins and ends with two images of the human person: the shadowy self that inaugurates the Inferno and the visage of Christ (la nostra effige) that concludes the paradisal ascent. I read the Commedia as just this: a chronicle of Dante’s translation (trasumanare) from the former to the latter, from shadow to Image. Specifically, this study offers a meditation on how Dante’s translation from shadow to Image is presided over by the Madonna, whose muted presence throughout the poem serves as a theophany, in literary form, of Divine humility. The controlling image of this thesis is a scene in Purgatorio 10 where Dante, after passing through the gates of purgatory and surveying the penitential landscape that horizons his journey ahead, will measure (misurebbe) that distance according to the scale of un corpo umano (Purg.10.24). As I interpret it, the appearance of this lexicon, misurrebbe—the conditional of misurare, meaning “to measure”—at this specific moment is Dante’s way of subtly articulating how the ascent up purgatory’s mountain is fundamentally a search after the human person: the human measure that is obscured and abandoned in inferno as a result of pride (superbia) is slowly rediscovered and mirrored in purgatory (Purg. 1.129). Specific to the Commedia, the search for this human measure unfolds within a Marian soundscape: it is the voice of Mary’s humility that en-voices anew Dante's own. In Purgatorio 10.97, Dante will name the image of Marian humility as visibile parlare, or speech made visible, an obvious gesture to the incarnation. As the breathing image of God, Mary’s humility represents much more than a mere virtue; at the literary level, it serves as an exegesis of the Divine society, a revealing of God. The image of Marian humility thus provides the key to interpreting the poem’s concluding visio dei, which does not unravel as an imageless mystical vision but appears as an enfleshed image: the face of Christ, whose visage is double, Divine and human. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to ponder the implications of Dante representing Marian humility as the vernacular of God. The result is a theological contribution to Dante studies where the literary presence of the Madonna is more fully thematized, a presence that, though central to both the poem’s form and content, has somehow remained largely understudied within Dante scholarship. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-70).

This theological study is a contribution to the search for a conception of justice which will form a just society. Its aim is to discover whether two leading modem secular theories of justice might be mediations of the justice of God, which I take to be a principle in Creation and the basis for the formation of society. My interdisciplinary approach advocates and employs critical theory to expose the pathologies of modernity, particularly domination (or the arbitrary use of power) as a major cause of injustice, and thus an impediment to the formation of a just society. This approach is undergirded by an Incarnational and Trinitarian theology which, through the use of a socio-political hermeneutic, transcends the biblical categories from which it origtuates. It recognises that the justice of God, understood throughout this thesis as right relationship or true sociality, is mediated through human agency and action which accord with God's nature and will. The theories of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas which I choose to examine understand justice in terms of normative legitimacy, achieved through a publicly discursive and justificatory procedure, leading to a rational consensus about the social norms which form and direct society. My study assesses how far each mediates God’s justice in forming society. It concludes that Habermas's theory has a stronger claim in this regard owing to its greater degree of consonance with the communicative nature of that justice, and to a recognition that the reality underlying Habermas's theory of justice as communicative action is God's justice, mediated in the linguistic structure of Habermas's procedure. In conclusion, I propose that the Church, in adopting this communicative understanding of justice, commit itself to the building and defence of a vibrant public sphere, in which justice is discursively determined; and in which all members of society, especially the disadvantaged for whom God is concerned, participate deliberatively in the formation of the society God justly wills.

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-70).

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-70).

<p>This dissertation is an account of how contemporary Pakistani ulama grapple with their political realities and the Islamic state of Pakistan. The central conceptual question that scaffolds my dissertation is: How do Pakistani ulama negotiate tradition, authority and sovereignty with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? In engaging with this issue, this dissertation employs a methodology that weds ethnography with rigorous textual analysis. The ulama that feature in this study belong to a variety of sectarian persuasions. The Sunni ulama are Deobandi and Barelvi; the Shia ulama in this study are Ithna Ashari. </p><p>In assessing the relationship between Pakistani ulama and their nation-state, I assert that the ulama's dialectical engagements with the state are best understood as a dexterous navigation between affirmation, critique, contestation and cultivation. In proposing this manner of thinking about Pakistani ulama's engagements with their state, I provide a more detailed and nuanced view of the ulama-state relationship compared to earlier works. While emphasizing Pakistani ulama's vitality and their impact on their state, this dissertation also draws attention to the manners in which the state impacts the ulama. It theorizes the subject formation of the ulama and asserts the importance of understanding the ulama as formed not just by the ethico-legal tradition in which they are trained but also by the state apparatus.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis ( M.A. ) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.