James Hudson Taylor is often proclaimed the Father of the Modern Faith Mission Movement. As the founder of the China Inland Mission (or modern day OMF International), it would seem that much of Taylor's legacy is indeed his pioneering work in missions and missiology. This is well worth the time and attention of researchers and students, as there is at least an assumption that many modern mission practices are patterned after Taylor's innovations. However, Taylor's life and legacy leaves the modern student with more than missiological principles. He also personally developed a unique and peculiar brand of biblical spirituality in the process of founding and leading one of the first modern faith-based, interdenominational mission societies. This research will seek to find connections between Taylor's peculiar brand of spirituality and his unique missiological leadership along with applications for the modern context. This will result in a qualitative description of Taylor's spirituality, missional leadership style along with connections with implications. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

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Many efforts have been made by nineteenth and twentieth-century critics alike to classify Charles Algernon Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (1866) as blatantly sacrilegious. This evaluative approach, however, fails to account for the thematic significance of Swinburne’s nuanced use of Christian imagery. Through a reading of three representative poems from the collection – “Dolores,” “Anactoria,” and “Laus Veneris” – this thesis demonstrates that Swinburne appropriates the Catholic concepts of transubstantiation, confession, and suffering for a specific aesthetic purpose. In the Catholic tradition, these concepts symbolically represent a unification of ostensibly antithetical states to achieve transcendence. For instance, the doctrine of transubstantiation unites the spiritual acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice through the physical consumption of bread and wine. Far from being, as Robert Buchanan famously claimed, “unclean for the mere sake of uncleanness,” Swinburne strategically appropriated the mechanism of religious transcendence in order to affect a poetic escape from the very moral categories it represented.

The improvvisatore tradition in Florence Italy during the second half of the quattrocento featured poet-musicians who sang poetry for music (poesia per musica) accompanied by the lira (da braccio). This thesis researches Florentine literati and threads of humanism in relation to poetry written for music. By doing so, philosophical and literary trends are analyzed in relation to the Florentine improvvisatore style: frottola versification forms and divinus furor. Marsilio Ficino’s (1433-1499) direction at the Platonic Academy (founded c. 1463) outside Florence in the hills of Carregi influenced some of the greatest artists and musicians of his time. This thesis focuses on lyric improvisation as a means of connecting mind and body with the universe. In doing so, Ficino’s music-spirit-theory and astrological program are looked at in light of the Platonic sources. The instrument of the improvvisatore, the lira, will be analyzed in relation to affect (ethos) and wellness for mind (soul) and body

The design of my proposal was deeply influenced by the typical character of spa pavillions in urban recreational parks. Neveertheless i combine such a character with contemporary more conceptual way of architecture. With maybe bigger scale, but having reasons for that. Into the center of park i place a house of baths, where all the activities typical for paths take action - massages, rehabilitation, swimming and wellness. Other parts of the project such as two new proposed buildings for a hotel have the same character of a pavillion in a park. Their interdependant relationships creates new story in a city.

In this paper, I examine if strong artificial intelligence can be achieved or not. Can machines have a mind, be conscious, think and have subjective experiences, just like a human? I analyze David Chalmers arguments supporting the possibility of strong AI and conclude that his emulation argument and principle of organizational invariance is not a sufficient condition for strong AI. Instead, I defend the thesis that life is a necessary condition for any conscious agent, human or machine (or other), to have a mind, be able to think and have subjective experiences. I revisit the ideas of the soul and of vitalism and the need for a life force energy, an élan vital as introduced by Henri Bergson. In the investigation of life I also examine if strong artificial life can be achieved or not, since this would be a prerequisite for strong AI.

Responding to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was founded by Moderate Baptists seeking to reclaim the historic Baptist principle of soul freedom. While this effort was successful, such soul freedom made it difficult for Moderates to hold diverse viewpoints together in unity within the context of a covenant community. Borrowing from the Christian contemplative tradition, which offers a set of shared spiritual practices capable of constructing diverse covenant communities, it is the purpose of this project to offer a process for applying contemplative spiritual practices to the life of Moderate Baptist congregations to reframe Baptist soul freedom as that which allows for personal liberty within the context of a diverse covenant community. / 2025-01-25T00:00:00Z

The following dissertation consists of a study of an eighth century A.D. Sanskrit text dealing with the soteriological implications of the nature of "bhoga"- "mundane experience" or, more precisely, "empirical consciousness". The dissertation can be subdivided into two major sections. The first section consists of a critical discussion or the doctrine of bhoga in the Bhogakārikāvrtti; the second section consists of an English translation of the Sanskrit text. The following study of the Bhoga Kārikā and its commentary has as its major concern the explication of the idea of "bhoga" put forth in the text. According to the school of Śaivism to which the author of the Bhoga Kārikā belongs, souls are by nature possessed of the two "capacities" (śakti) of consciousness and agency. Existing in a beginningless condition in the soul, these two capacities are obfuscated by the defiling power of a cosmic principle described as "mala". Due to this defilement the soul is forced into experiencing things in a limited manner, i.e. solely as an ego-personality whose self-understanding is both defined by and limited to the empirical sphere of experience. In explicating the doctrine of bhoga expressed by Sadyojyoti and defending his commentator Aghora Śiva, the dissertation takes up a discussion on the various polemics against other systems, such as the Buddhists, Cārvāka, Nyāya and Sāmkhya. As well, an attempt is made to point out the particular manner in which Sadyojyoti's doctrine of "bhoga" shares close affiliations with the schools of Mīmāmsā and Sāmkhya-Yoga. The text was translated under the guidance of Dr. S. S. Janaki, the Director of Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute in Madras. The Sanskrit text of the Bhoga Kārikā consists of 146 verses by a renowned Śaivite author, Sadyojyoti (8th c. A. D.) and a brief commentary by another renowned Śaivite author, Aghora Śiva (14th c. A. D.). Although by themselves the verses are difficult to understand without the aid of the commentary, the commentary itself is written in simple Sanskrit prose. The Bhoga Kārikā is one of a host of Śaivite "manuals" that systematically define the essential teachings and particular themes of Agamic Śaivism. Aghora Śiva's commentary on the Bhoga Kārikā is typical of the commentaries accompanying most of these manuals: it is brief and polemical. Chapter I of the dissertation deals with the authors Sadyojyoti and Aghora Śiva in relation to the Śaivite tradition; as well, Chapter I treats the basic concepts of "bhoga" and "tattva" employed in the Bhoga Kārikā. Chapter II deals with the doctrine of the subtle and the gross elements, emphasizing the concern of the tattvic doctrine that each tattva is a sine qua non in the event of bhoga. Chapter III treats the sphere of the motor, sense and intellectual organs and the polemics against the Cārvākas and Nyāya concerning the role of "consciousness" in the sphere of empirical experience. The specific organs of the "antahkarana" , i.e. ,manas, buddhi and ahamkāra, are treated in Chapter IV. More epistemological issues are discussed in Chapter V, most notably the Śaivite doctrine that the soul has intrinsic to the dual capacities (śakti) of consciousness and agency. The last chapter, Chapter VI, deals with the trans-buddhi conditions governing empirical consciousness, and includes a discussion of the soteriological import of māyā and mala. Appendix I consists of the translation of the Bhoga Kārikā Vrtti while the transliteration of the text appears in Appendix II. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Avicenna argues that the celestial spheres each have a soul, termed the motive soul, which is emanated by the first celestial intellect––a body of knowledge which knows itself. Despite outlining the powers of the motive soul, Avicenna does not formally investigate the psychology of the spheres nor their volition. Rather, he presents their volition as a mystery and leaves it to posterity to solve. In an attempt to resolve this mystery, I will argue that it is a direct result of Avicenna having purposefully written a repeated gap into his account of emanation such that there is no clear account of the generation of the material which composes the sphere of the heavens; after clarifying the account of emanation by demonstrating that the sphere has a direct connection to the emanating intellect, I will make the plausible argument that estimation has an intellectual volition insofar as it as it possesses a shared similarity with the practical intellect such that its volition is of the same species of volition: intellectual rather than psychological.

La presente tesis, titulada Ave Soul: Hacia un franco y verdadero proceso de ruptura. La construcción de un nuevo sujeto en la poesía de Jorge Pimentel, tiene como objetivo analizar algunos poemas del libro Ave Soul, del poeta peruano Jorge Pimentel, con el propósito de mostrar el descentramiento y la alienación subjetivos como una verdad personal y fundamental del sujeto que le permite replantear su identidad y su relación con el mundo bajo el deseo de construcción de un nuevo orden social. Ave Soul es un libro que llama la atención por la luminosidad, la simpleza y la potencia de su lenguaje, desde el cual accede con vitalidad y agudeza a lo más íntimo del sujeto para ponerlo en conexión con el mundo. He organizado la tesis de tal forma que en el primer capítulo me dedicaré a analizar cómo es que se lleva a cabo la escisión del sujeto, representado por la voz poética, con aquello que, desde el exterior, llama su atención y se configura como lo más auténtico de su ser. En el segundo capítulo mostraré cómo es que el poemario plantea que aquel encuentro tiene como efecto una verdad ineludible para el sujeto en cuestión, desde la cual debe de trabajar y a la que debe contrastar con el mundo exterior, cambiando su forma de ser para el mundo. Finalmente analizaré cómo el poemario muestra la posibilidad de que el sujeto incida en el mundo a partir de su cambio subjetivo, con la intención de reformularlo a partir de valores que hoy en día la realidad actual no admite. Finalmente, en la conclusión, detallaré tres motivos importantes por los que considero necesario seguir investigando y analizando este poemario.