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Theatre has a special place in religious education for it is an ideal medium to experience transcendent moral truths. Relying on Gabriel Moran's theory of transcendence, as well as Daniel Maguire's understanding of the moral, this thesis will demonstrate that the aesthetic experience of a play is a transcendent experience. Through such an experience, adolescent students may intuit insights about what befits persons as moral persons in all their complexity and wonder. The plays chosen for concentration in this thesis are not to be considered exhaustive but only as sound examples of the treatment of the evolution of transcendent values within the adolescent phenomenon.

This thesis examines Jaina strategies for justifying violence (himsa) in societal self-defense in contradistinction to the religion's overwhelming emphasis on nonviolence (ahimsa). The thesis' main focus is an ethnographic study of the views on societal self-defense of some contemporary lay Jainas in Delhi and Jaipur, India. I compare these views with the textual-historical Jaina position on ksatriya-dharma (the duty of kings) and "Just War," as advanced through ancient and medieval Jaina texts. Recent ethnographies omit the issue of Jaina attitudes to self-defense almost entirely. However, since India's nuclear tests in 1998, India has become a major Asian political, social and economic power. Indian Jainas have changed along with other Indians in the way that they see themselves in relation to the world and to other Indians. My findings suggest that major changes might have occurred since the latest ethnographic studies of Jainism in the nineties.

The relation between revelation and reason is a matter of interest for human beings and is connected with the development of reason and knowledge in modern society. Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, a modern Muslim scholar who was an expert in both Islamic philosophy and Qur'anic interpretation, developed new approaches to such issues as the role of human rational ability, logic and philosophy in religious knowledge. Furthermore he deals with such specific controversial topics on the subject of revelation and reason as, social freedom and freedom of thought and belief in Islam. He tends to elaborate his view of freedom based on both the Qur'an and rational bases. Tabataba'i's approach to revelation and reason, his reconciliation of them in general, and his specific perspective of freedom are studied in this thesis with respect to their underlying principles and their scopes.

Despite calls for increased attention to religion and spirituality in social work education and practice, the topic remains a neglected area. This small exploratory study seeks to examine barriers that cause religion and spirituality to continue to be on the periphery in social work education. Involved are six faculty members, teaching a range of social work courses. Insights into some of the controversial issues that arise in the classroom when religion and spirituality are discussed are offered. Findings suggest a lack of uniformity in teaching approaches, indicating that educators may be unclear about how to address the topic.

The principal subject of this thesis is the place of emotion in Buddhist practice. Asvaghos&dotbelow;a's epic poem, the Saundarananda , has served as a case study. The bulk of the information in the preliminary chapters has been presented in order to provide a background to Asvaghos&dotbelow;a's thinking. In this regard, there are two principal streams of thinking that feed into Asvaghos&dotbelow;a's work: the aesthetic and the Buddhist. A great part of this thesis has been devoted to the process of translating the concept of emotion into a corresponding concept in Asvaghos&dotbelow;a's Saundarananda. However, my primary motivating interests here have been the role of emotion in meditative attitude, and the place of emotion in the mind of the enlightened sage.

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In the Hebrew Bible, literary patterns of revelation and concealment are based on humanity's initial encounter with God in the Garden of Eden. God asks the question "Where are you?" Adam and Eve reveal themselves by articulating their concealment behind the fig leaf. This paradox effects their exile from Eden, and their progeny must henceforth mediate this paradox in their future verbal intercourse with God. / It is the intention of this work to suggest how in certain textual passages, this paradox is defined and structured according to a literary dichotomy of language and silence. After the exile, biblical characters proclaim their presence before God by uttering a password ("Here I am") which is, in effect, an existential utterance of dialogic reconstruction. Through various literary devices, I hope to show how this "vertical" dialogue is re-established by Adam and Eve's progeny, and how the biblical narrator(s) uses language to show silence as a "phenomenon" of the word.