In this dissertation a study was conducted about the tension that develops between God and man during suffering, by discussing the following topics: · The understanding and topicality of suffering It stands to reason that in this broken world sooner or later everyone is subjected to suffering. The assumption is that Christians are not adequately prepared for this process. The results of suffering can therefore be very destructive for Christians and may consequently lead to a situation where God's power, goodness and love are questioned. The sufferer may ask why God allowed this to happen to him/her. He/she can experience tension as a result of an internal conflict between God’s power and promises, on the one hand, and his/her own inability to understand and cope with th e situation on the other. If this tension is not relieved, it leads to a crisis of faith in God's power and the truth of the biblical teachings and promises on suffering. · The realization of the promises of God during suffering During suffering a person may not only question the truth of God's promises but also their realization. He/she could feel therefore totally abandoned and betrayed in times of God’s silence. This could again result in a breakdown in the relationship between the sufferer and God. There may of course, be many reasons for this breakdown, but the misunderstanding of the realization of God’s promises plays a very important role in this process. Fact is that promises are mostly conditional and if a promise is not understood and the condition is not fulfilled, the sufferer cannot expect the promise to realize. Many of the questions asked by sufferers have to do with one or more of these promises and, therefore, it is important to know how one should apply or claim a specific promise. One of the most important facts about promises is that God cannot lie. He will keep His word and He is true to every word that He has ever spoken. · Handling and coping with suffering - recommendations and conclusions The sufferer goes through certain stages of suffering and it is necessary to note these stages when help is offered. People often try to help, but in doing so, their words may inadvertently cause more damage than good. During certain stages, specific answers or advice will not assist in the sufferer’s experience. There is a need for people to be better informed in this regard. It further means that the sufferer should realize that there are no quick-fix answers, but even so, he/she can be assured that God has the power to use suffering to accomplish positive things in his/her life and to help the sufferer to become more like Christ. This study has identified the tension during chronic suffering that leads to a crisis in faith between God who is powerful and the sufferer who feels powerless in his/her situation. It has also identified specific problems in this regard, and stated certain guide lines in the process of suffering. / Dr. F.P. Moller

Thesis (M.A.)--Capital Bible Seminary, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-47).

The primary aim of the dissertation is to introduce a new theory of promissory obligation, the authority theory. The authority theory holds that promises are obligatory because they are commands we give ourselves, as authorities over ourselves. I motivate the theory by arguing that traditional views of promising can't explain promises we make to ourselves.In the first chapter I introduce and detail the notion of a promissory obligation. I briefly recount some of the history of the Western philosophical views of promissory obligations, focusing on the Natural Law tradition from the Stoics, through the Roman and Medieval writers, into the 17th Century.In the second chapter, I introduce the notion of a promise to the self. I argue that vows, oaths and pledges are best explained as self promises. I then counter two important objections to self promises: That self promises can't be obligatory because the promiser can release herself from the promise; and that such instances of putative promise are best explained as expressions of acknowledgement of prior obligations.In the third chapter I offer arguments that the current crop of theories of promising are unable to account for self promises. I categorize three modern approaches to promising: prudentialism, which grounds promissory obligation in the potential harm a promise-breaker might suffer for his transgression; expectationalism, which grounds the obligation in the expectations that promises raise in promisees, and conventionalism, which grounds the obligation in the convention of promising. I argue that none of these approaches can accommodate promises to the self, and that a new approach is indicated.In the final chapter I introduce the new theory. I explain how it is that we have the authority to issue commands to ourselves, and I argue for the probity of such self commands by reference to the existence of such reflexive authority in other venues, most notably in the armed forces. I also list the advantages the authority theory has over its competition, apart from its ability to explain self promises. I conclude by outlining a future research project in examining the meta-ethical implications of reflexive authority.

The problem of this thesis is to determine the relationship of political promises made by the elected candidates for governor with their achievements in relation to these political promises. From such an evaluation, it is hoped to determine the value of different types of political promises, and thus be more able to judge properly candidates seeking the office of governor.

Thesis advisor: Christopher J. Kelly / This dissertation is an attempt to elucidate Jean-Jacques Rousseau's answer to the question "why keep a promise?" with the aim of answering the more particular political question of why one should keep the social contract. I begin by explicating Rousseau's arguments against natural law in order to demonstrate why the theme of promises is so important for his political thought. Rousseau rejects the position that natural moral inequalities among people dictate who should rule and who should be ruled. Like other modern political thinkers, he maintains that political right derives from each citizen's signing of the social contract. But unlike some other modern thinkers, Rousseau denies that the self-interest of each individual is sufficient motivation for keeping that contract. Moreover, he argues that one who is merely self-interested and who makes promises "only for profit" will "set himself in contradiction with himself." I show the nature and causes of this contradiction in the soul. But although self-interested, deceitful promises cause one to come into contradiction with oneself, Rousseau does not believe that even awareness of this fact can sufficiently motivate people to give up the desire for what can be gained by deception. I therefore turn to the question of what can provide this motivation. I first examine Rousseau's understanding of moral freedom, virtue, and the conscience. I find that virtue is constituted by the commands of reason and the conscience, and that the conscience is formed out of well-ordered sentiments. Having these sentiments and the strength of soul necessary for virtue can make a person keep his promises and avoid coming into contradiction with himself. But most people lack this strength of soul, and therefore belief in a providential God is needed in order for them to be just. I then show how the faith of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar is capable of providing sanctity to the social contract by allowing for the civic-minded appropriation of what Rousseau calls "the language of sign." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

This thesis is an exploration into the mechanism of Marxist materialism. It is an attempt, in the face of materialism, to regain a grasp on our intellectual lives. The promise, I will argue, is a nexus between the material and ideal realms; it largely determines the configurations of our thoughts along three poles: privacy/recognition, sovereignty/subjection, and individual/society. In this thesis, I will explore the history of the promise during the sixteenth-century development of the negotiable instrument- a form of the promise that could be bought and sold. This development, I will argue, led to a general transformation of language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries such that the concept of the referent largely replaced the concept of the signifier. In the realm of mathematics, this transformation led to the creation of the symbolic variable; elsewhere, it led to the creation of what Mary Poovey has called the modern fact.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times} Thomas Scanlon provides a theory of why we ought to keep our promises according to which the wrong of breaking a promise is a moral wrong that does not depend on any social practice. Instead a promise provides a recipient with assurance and the value of assurance establishes a moral obligation to keep our promises. However, it is often charged that theories like Scanlon’s are untenable because they are subject to a vicious circularity. I address some recent critics of Scanlon’s theory, all of whom maintain that his account does not adequately show how a promise provides assurance and therefore does not overcome the charge of circularity in explaining why we are obligated to keep our promises. I revise Scanlon’s theory and show how a promise can provide a recipient with assurance, demonstrating that Scanlon’s account is a tenable theory of why we have an obligation to keep our promises.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

Background: Development of technologies and high pace of changes made a modern organization highly dependent on the expertise and assistance of technology specialists. To be able to compete and be cost efficient, but at the same time be on the cutting-edge of technology development, is an essential requirement for doing business in the contemporary world. Moreover, this requirement became a solid ground for the emergence of a technical consulting industry and a new type of human resources - technical consultants. On the one hand, technical consultants are the main resources of technical consulting organizations, but on the other hand, technical consultants can cause harm to technical consulting organization, particularly, in the case of voluntary turnover. Aim: Through the qualitative analysis of the four technical consultants’ voluntary turnover stories in Sweden and based on the literature review, this master thesis opens up the door to the world of technical consultants. The aim of this work is to seek new insights into the problem of voluntary turnover in a new context of technical consultants and discover what role multiple identities and perceived promises play in voluntary turnover decision. Results: Technical consultants are a type of knowledge workers with non-traditional work arrangements. Empirical evidence demonstrates that technical consultants’ decision to quit can be described using "Eight motivational forces", but the framework should be extended, due to developing multiple identities and receiving perceived promises from multiple sources.

Abstract Ever since the telecommunication is opened and liberalized, it to be privately owned is inevitable, however if the government promotes the policy of privately owning by the people, what concerns the employees of the public enterprises most will be the loss of guarantee of work rights, and they will fear that their labor conditions and welfares be influenced, and thus adapt the behaviors of being uncooperative and resistant, and simultaneously tend to move away from the centripetal force of the company. This research is proceeded by means of questionnaires on the basis of the relative factors and its relations of the recognition on ethics atmosphere, organizational promises and organizational civil behaviors of the employees of Chunghwa Telecom, since the Hsinying Operation Office and Chiali Operation Office of Chunghwa Telecom were merged on June 1, 2000. The research targets were those three of the one staying in the Hsinying Operation Office, the one being transferred from Chiali to Hsinying Operation Office, and the one staying in the Chiali Service Center. Study was made on the influences of relative factors between the ethics atmosphere, organizational promises and organizational civil behaviors after the organization is merged. A total of 260 questionnaires were distributed, after 193 copies were returned and turned to be effective and been analyzed with supportive evidences, the data was processed with analysis of validity, t examination, analysis of coefficient of variation on sole factors, Pierson¡¦s relative analysis and rotating analysis. Studies were made on the differences and its relative influences of individual variations and categories of employees to the ethics atmosphere, organizational promises and organizational civil behaviors after the organizations of Chinese Telecom were merged. After the results of the research are synthesized, it is found that: (1)There is a remarkable diversity among different categories of employees on ethics atmosphere, organizational promises and organizational civil behaviors. (2)Among different categories of employees, the performance on organizational civil behavior of the employee being transferred from Chiali to Hsinyin outranks the other two on ethics atmosphere and organizational promises. (3)Males care more about the ethics atmosphere than females, yet there is no remarkable diversity on organizational promises and organizational civil behaviors between two sexes. (4)After the amalgamation, of these three categories of employees, the employee of Hsinying Operation Office agreed least with the care toward the ethics atmosphere, therefore, the humane care of the organization should be reinforced to raise the satisfaction degree on ethics atmosphere and the identification degree on organizational promises of the organization, in order to promote the raise on organizational civil behaviors of the companies. (5)Other than that sex and seniority having remarkable negative influences on being persistence to one¡¦s duty in individual variation, whereas marriage has remarkable positive influences on being persistence to one¡¦s duty, categories of employees has remarkable negative influences on human relations to others, whereas there is no remarkable influence on the three structures of organizational civil behaviors for the rest individual variations. (6)They all have remarkable positive influences on the trend of regulations of ethics atmosphere towards the three structures of organizational civil behaviors, there are remarkable positive influences on individual profit towards human relations to others. For organizational promises, emotional promises has remarkable influences on organizational profits and human relations to others, whereas they all have remarkable positive influences for continuous promises to being persistence to one¡¦s duty and moral promises to being persistence to one¡¦s duty and human relations to others. According to the results of the above research, the following suggestions are made: create new business aggressively to guarantee the work rights of the employees, and promote the will to accept the revolution of being privately owned by the people of the employees; enhance the cultivation of the personnel to decrease the resistance on the revolution of being privately owned by the people of the employees; institute anew each system appropriately; reinforce the functions of communication and coordination among the units, delegate the authorities of positions specifically to raise the operational efficiency of the organization: improve the ethics atmosphere and organizational promises to raise the centripetal force and will to work of the employees. Key words: Ethics Atmosphere, Organizational Promises, Organizational Civil Behavior, Chunghwa Telecom.