Thesis (DTh (Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / This study is a critical evaluation of the concept „communicative freedom‟ in the work of the theologian Wolfgang Huber. It is argued that his rearticulation of the Reformation‟s understanding of freedom is a critical engagement of modernity. Communicative freedom is therefore developed as a critical Christian concept of freedom. It is shown how Huber‟s concept of communicative freedom is to be understood as a contemporary expression of classic Protestant views of freedom. In terms of the concept‟s content it is shown to stay true to some of the Reformation‟s basic theological convictions. Huber understands the concept to consist of three dimensions. It is inalienable as it is constituted by God and is therefore not the result of human achievements or abilities. The freedom that is constituted by God‟s initiative can be realised only in interpersonal relationships and therefore its inalienable dimension forms the basis of its personal dimension. Communicative freedom does not separate human individuality and sociality from one another but emphasises their shared origin. Lastly the reality of sin is incorporated into the concept by recognising the provisional nature of freedom‟s realisation. It is shown that this self-critical character of communicative freedom does not imply resignation but that Huber develops it as a call to action. It is argued that Huber does not articulate this Christian understanding of freedom as a goal in itself, but as a means by which to engage modernity. The implications of these theological dimensions of communicative freedom are then developed as both Huber‟s critical affirmation of the modernist project as well as his contribution to modernity‟s renewal. Communicative freedom serves as critical affirmation of modernity by the way in which it engages the role of the individual and the role society plays in enabling different individuals to co-exist. This concept is shown to enable the responsible realisation of freedom in the context of secularisation, democracy and pluralism. Communicative freedom also contributes to the renewal of modernity, namely by means of its reinterpretation of progress, the way it contributes to the restoration of a comprehensive form of justice and its focus on the importance of dialogue. The dissertation concludes with some comments concerning the engagement of modernity by communicative freedom from a South African perspective.

The constituent concepts of theology, also practical theology and counselling, have lost much of their previously precise meaning, also by virtue of the growing confusion surrounding what counts as counselling and theology. This crisis has created a lot of uncertainty that this thesis endeavours to counter. As the defining paradigm inscriptions of the old modern methodological boundary stones have weathered away, any attempt simply to rework traditional counselling and theological problems proves to be a futile venture. Even if the measure of critical consciousness regarding worn-out modernistic concepts has been raised to a maximum height towards renewed initiation and even if the intentions remain unabashedly sincere to move beyond the disintegrating modernistic approaches, they prove to be an ineffective scheme. The dissertation states courteously, but deliberately that it is not possible to move beyond modern counselling and theology from within modernism. Postmodernism is also not simply a new critical approach barring generalizations, "grand narratives", objective descriptions and dogmatic statements. Deconstruction, not as a new approach, but rather as opening up new dimensions towards celebrating life, can move beyond modernism towards postmodernism, maintaining reason and logical arguments, and rejecting the slogan "everything goes". In fact, if you scratch a sceptical relativist, you will expose a ... modernist, as the reverse side of an absolutist conviction. Postmodernism and deconstruction set new differentiated agendas for and redraw new-fangled "maps" of counselling and theology. The exposure of the different contemporary approaches regarding certainty in modernism and Cartesian proclamations is distinguished and the different perspectives are thematically woven together as a response to the sense of "crisis" in need of new discernment, rather than by new approaches in defining specific problems. The conclusions of postmodernism and deconstruction are not gratuitous nuggets containing certain solutions to be exchanged for edification of some spurious second enlightenment, but perhaps they are bridgeheads to different shores. The story of "dancing with uncertainty" starts with disentangling modern communication of sending "meaning" and receiving "clear" messages as impossible, towards postmodern communication where "communication is the message". Consequently, counselling and theology are enlivened from ontology to praxis, not by the objective Word or an a priori method, theory or faith determination, but by the praxis of the Holy Spirit. Descartes' legacy, determining life for more than three hundred years, is unraveled and thwarted: - The subject-object split in thinking and acting, supporting "representation" of objects by the subject, is debunked as false. - The transforming of "representation" into "presentation" as the heart of the modern problem, where knowledge is obtained "immediately" and not by way of mediation of language and numerous interpretations, and where God is known directly or "immediately" and not by way of interpreted revelation or human concepts, is rendered fictitious. - The determination of life in al its variety as mathematically, logically and formally certain, causing "facts" to be either true or false depending on the "correct" methodology and theories as solutions, is exposed as conjured. Life, counselling and theology are always in a specific historical vista, cultural context and personal detailed milieu. The perspective determines the validity of the "fact". If you live by "eternal truths" and predetermined certainty, there is no room for the work of the Holy Spirit. A start is made to remove the modern Cartesian foundations of counselling and theologies towards postmodern approaches where we do not know what heals and what certain theology is. Every one can counsel through the Holy Spirit and there are as many theologies, as reactions on the revelations of God in Christ, as there are people. Theology and counselling are pre-theoretical and pre-cognitive as they do not proceed from a translucent self or a "neutral" language. We are not healed or saved through an objective certitude of believing dogmas or applying curing techniques, but by a living faith in Christ and an empowering praxis of the Holy Spirit enlivening us towards more humanness and humaneness. Our approach is pneumatological as we can never in any circumstance determine theology and counselling from outside the process of performing counselling and theologizing. That would follow the devious Cartesian subject-object split of determination of eternal objective truths and methods of curing from inside an isolated monad, the self. Postmodernism claims that we are always already immersed in the world and only when we assume not to be and step back, theorise, theologise and narrate narratives, devise counselling techniques, we actually determine final truths and facts. This is a total deception as we always approach theology and counselling, "objective reality" already with concepts, language assumptions, theories and values. Postmodernism claims that both realism, the conviction of a neutral independent world "out there", as well as idealism (anti-realism), the conviction that certainty entails the mind in full self-consciousness, are false outgrows of Cartesian representations of the subject-object split. The thesis culminates in the postmodern claim of the Holy Spirit overcoming the 2000 years old faith-knowledge dichotomy and dualism. The Holy Spirit does not assist in attaining "supernatural" healing in counselling or obtaining "eternal truth" clarity in theology, but in enhancing the humanness and humaneness of people in this world, eschewing another realm, the supernatural with dominant "theories", "eternal truths" and final dogmas. Exuberance invading this life from the final victory of the Kingdom of God is effected by the Holy Spirit in all spheres of life, albeit tentatively and provisionally. This study concludes by claiming that life is not theologically or psychologically certain, but joyous and beautiful, so that we can always dance with uncertainty. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th.

In this thesis the researcher has investigated which of the two concepts: believing before belonging or belonging before believing, is a more accountable perspective in regards to ministry in post-Christendom society. With the final stages of the modern period the power of hegemonic ideologies is coming to an end as people identify less with grand ideologies and more with subcultures related to technology and social and economic networks of different kinds. The post-Christendom phase has begun and is radically challenging Christendom notions of ministry. We have to assume that among post-Christians the familiarity with Christian concepts will fade as the decline of Christendom has meant that Christianity has been losing its status as a lingua franca, only to be understood in the long run, by those who are professing Christians. It is therefore important that the church will anticipate longer journeys towards faith and not move on to disciple new converts too quickly. Post- Christendom evangelization will consequently take longer, start further back and move more slowly. In the context of post-Christendom, knowledge of Christianity is rather limited and people need to come to an understanding of what Christianity entails. For those seekers, exploratory participation at first is safer than making a definite commitment. Postmodern society is also suspicious of institutions and eager to find whether Christian beliefs also work in practice and not only in theory. Therefore is belonging before believing very much necessary for seekers to test whether Christians live out in their communities what they claim to be true? / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

The purpose of this thesis is to re-assert beauty as a fundamental and essential value within contemporary Christendom as it exists within a postmodern culture. Once a strong and meaningful concept within Christian belief, beauty has been lost over the passage of two millennia. This thesis examines the loss of beauty as a meaningful concept in western Christian belief, and offers a re-evaluation of the concept particularly within the postmodern world. Drawing together the fundamental concerns of postmodern society and the contribution that beauty is able to make from within the Christian context, this thesis demonstrates that "beauty" speaks to contemporary concerns and meets its deepest needs. Here, beauty, understood as the relational aspect of forms conceived by God, and offered to humanity as gift, is shown to overcome the affective sterility that has overtaken western society as an effect of enlightenment thought. An examination of the concept of beauty, particularly in the works of Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards and Gerard Manley Hopkins serves as a basis to posit a definition of beauty that is consistent with Christian beliefs without violating its unique content. Tracing the loss of beauty in western Christian thought and in western culture at large, and recognising the absence of a similar phenomenon within the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, suggests that the genius of these eastern traditions is their refusal to minimise the notion of "mystery" that stands at the heart of Christian revelation. The western Church then, is called to refocus on the centrality of the "mystery" inherent in her life. To this end, contemplation is proposed as the avenue wherein the believer experiences an intimate and transforming encounter with the Triune God which leads to the fruition of unique personhood that increasingly takes form as the "beauty of holiness." / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

The purpose of this thesis is to re-assert beauty as a fundamental and essential value within contemporary Christendom as it exists within a postmodern culture. Once a strong and meaningful concept within Christian belief, beauty has been lost over the passage of two millennia. This thesis examines the loss of beauty as a meaningful concept in western Christian belief, and offers a re-evaluation of the concept particularly within the postmodern world. Drawing together the fundamental concerns of postmodern society and the contribution that beauty is able to make from within the Christian context, this thesis demonstrates that "beauty" speaks to contemporary concerns and meets its deepest needs. Here, beauty, understood as the relational aspect of forms conceived by God, and offered to humanity as gift, is shown to overcome the affective sterility that has overtaken western society as an effect of enlightenment thought. An examination of the concept of beauty, particularly in the works of Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards and Gerard Manley Hopkins serves as a basis to posit a definition of beauty that is consistent with Christian beliefs without violating its unique content. Tracing the loss of beauty in western Christian thought and in western culture at large, and recognising the absence of a similar phenomenon within the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, suggests that the genius of these eastern traditions is their refusal to minimise the notion of "mystery" that stands at the heart of Christian revelation. The western Church then, is called to refocus on the centrality of the "mystery" inherent in her life. To this end, contemplation is proposed as the avenue wherein the believer experiences an intimate and transforming encounter with the Triune God which leads to the fruition of unique personhood that increasingly takes form as the "beauty of holiness." / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (Practical Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

In this thesis the researcher has investigated which of the two concepts: believing before belonging or belonging before believing, is a more accountable perspective in regards to ministry in post-Christendom society. With the final stages of the modern period the power of hegemonic ideologies is coming to an end as people identify less with grand ideologies and more with subcultures related to technology and social and economic networks of different kinds. The post-Christendom phase has begun and is radically challenging Christendom notions of ministry. We have to assume that among post-Christians the familiarity with Christian concepts will fade as the decline of Christendom has meant that Christianity has been losing its status as a lingua franca, only to be understood in the long run, by those who are professing Christians. It is therefore important that the church will anticipate longer journeys towards faith and not move on to disciple new converts too quickly. Post- Christendom evangelization will consequently take longer, start further back and move more slowly. In the context of post-Christendom, knowledge of Christianity is rather limited and people need to come to an understanding of what Christianity entails. For those seekers, exploratory participation at first is safer than making a definite commitment. Postmodern society is also suspicious of institutions and eager to find whether Christian beliefs also work in practice and not only in theory. Therefore is belonging before believing very much necessary for seekers to test whether Christians live out in their communities what they claim to be true? / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

Religious and cultural discourses shape relationships/marriages. The constructed nature of relationships/marriages opens the possibility for alternative relational realities. Positioning relationships/marriages in alternative discourses assisted the couples to construct a preferred relationship narrative. Three couples embarked on this feminist participatory action research journey - a couple from the Jehovah's Witnesses tradition,' a couple from the Dutch Reformed Church and a couple from a Gay Refonned Church. Conversations with the participating couples deconstructed their relationships. It also enabled the couples to co-author alternative, preferred realities of their relationships/marriages and to provide rich descriptions of these. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Pastoral Therapy)

The genre affiliation is a postmodern study: Virtual Reality (VR) becomes a comprehensive concept, in the face of modernism's illusion, when rhetoric validates all discourses. All is VR. The study is in three sections with an overall introduction and conclusion: the first section introduces VR in its postmodern setting, the second section establishes the postmodern timeless/spaceless paradigm of HyperReality in which all Hermeneutics are being done from, the last section draws the paradigm into the Creatio Ex Nihilio discourse of the Scriptures. The proposed theological model is an intratextual theological model, however when YAHWEH precedes language then all discourses become intratextually part of the Biblical discourse. Human creativity is a metaphorical journey; the Fall was the outset of two languages, one in the presence of YAHWEH, while the other one void of this presence led to a nihilistic abstract constellation. Sin in VR is the unbiblical appropriation of this constellation. / Thesis (M.Th.)

The 'postmodern challenge' is increasingly felt in the 'end of modernity' to which Gianni Vattimo refers. The West and the world has hitherto been dominated by what Andrew Gamble characterises as the Modern or Western Ideology. But the validity of that worldview and its associated ways of thinking, going back to the 'Enlightenment' and beyond, has come to be radically questioned. It is within this context that the work and thought of CS Lewis is examined. Although Lewis is generally recognised, and regarded himself, as conservative and even reactionary, there is a paradoxical quality to his conservatism, the elements of which coexist with features which might be regarded as liberal and as radically socialist respectively. Similarly, his commitment to the religious and cultural tradition of Western Europe co-exists with a vehement anticolonialism. A paradoxical association of postmodermism with 'premodernity' has been widely noted in Buddhism and, by Derrida, in Eastern Christian theology. This thesis seeks to demonstrate that a paradoxical postmodernism is evident in the thought of Lewis. One source suggested for this is his interest in Eastern Christianity. Another is identified as the influence on Lewis of the opposition of Romanticism to 'Enlightenment' modernity. But Lewis's own engagement with modernity is also shown to be significant. Two broad trends in postmodernism are discussed. The affinities of Lewis's thought with the nihilistic tradition of postmodernism, going back to Nietzsche, is traced with regard to issues such as rationalism, science, the autonomy of the subject, and authorship. But the ambivalent relationship of Lewis to spiritually-oriented, affirmative postmodernism, and particularly Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, is also analysed. The crucial role of Scholasticism in the development of Western thought is investigated in a comparison of Steiner's views with the Christian position of Lewis. It is concluded that there are grounds to regard Lewis as. 'prophet of postmodernism', and he is compared with Nietzsche and Pope John-Paul II in this regard. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Church History)