This dissertation examines one of the most significant theological shifts in the Rastafari movement: the transformation of the Rastafari deity, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I, from Jah in the flesh to the spirit that dwells within the body of each Rasta. Although the belief that Rastas are participants in the divinity of Jah emerged early in Rastafari, it was not until Selassie’s death in 1975 that the theological assertion of Jah dwelling within their bodies as the spirit emerged. Despite the initial claim made by some of the early Rastas that their bodies are the dwelling place of Jah, the notion of Jah as indwelling the spirit remains undertheorized, thus leading to an inadequate view that Rastafari is tenuously an African-derived religion. The aim of this dissertation, therefore, is to make visible the notion of Jah as spirit by focusing on how Rastas conceptualize and ritualize the process of Jah becoming a part of their bodies. The dissertation proposes divine envesselment as a central theoretical and conceptual framework to understand the Rastafari belief that their deity Jah becomes a permanent part of their bodies, thereby imbuing them with divine power, authority, and identity to resist the oppressive state Babylon. By formulating a theory of divine envesselment to account for the indwelling of Jah within the body, this study highlights the social, cultural, and theological factors that enabled Rastas to deify Selassie, continue to proclaim him as God after his death, and distinguish themselves from the oppressive neocolonial state through their ritualization of Jah spirit and power. The study uses an African-centered epistemological approach to argue that the Rastafari belief that Jah dwells within them is not only an embrace of the spirit but an ethos rooted in the history of contestation and creative friction within the Afro-Caribbean religious field. Furthermore, an African-centered epistemology locates the process of divine envesselment (Jah becoming the spirit that dwells in flesh) within the social, material, intellectual, and symbolic world of African people on the continent and in the diaspora. The study asserts that the logic, structure, and nature of Rastafari as an African-derived religion with a conception of spirit become evident when examined through an African-centered epistemological lens. / Religion

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-79). / The following study is an ethnographic exploration into young people’s entangled experiences of health and illness in relation to both HIV/AIDS and traditional forms of healing. The research employed a creative, didactic methodology based around a series of workshops conducted with two non-governmental organisations based in Grahamstown’s peri-urban townships: The first, Siyapumelela, maintains a focus on youth and HIV/AIDS; the second, Sakhuluntu, is a cultural group aimed at keeping young people off the streets. The argument begins by challenging the dichotomous relationship that is maintained between Modern Scientific Medicine and traditional forms of healing and calls for a dual standard system in which both epistemologies can be free to operate according to their own medical standards. The study explores young people’s therapeutic environments and tracks, in particular, how young people talk about and represent HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is discussed as a concept metaphor; a domain term that orients a person towards areas of shared exchange and meaning. It is clear that most young people have a well-informed biomedical understanding of HIV/AIDS, yet metaphorically, they see it as a dangerous and destructive force; an uncertain threat in the world. The research poses the question as to why young people continue to put themselves at risk of contracting HIV by exploring the social environments which many young people are subject to – environments that are often characterised by extreme social structural violence. The argument examines the nature of social structural violence as it plays itself out in the everyday lives of the participants and identifies the kinds of challenges that many of them face on a day-to-day basis. Due to fragmented avenues of support and conditions of domestic fluidity, many young people from structurally violent communities are left with feelings of vulnerability and insecurity. Alongside experiences of social and structural insecurity, young people also harbour a sense of spiritual insecurity that stems from the dissolution of the ancestral cult as a result of the historical, yet persisting, fragmentation and reorganisation of the African family unit. The research discusses a form of spirit possession known as Amakhosi that young people engage in in order to (re)gain a sense of security and protection from forces beyond their control.

Genius loci has been described as "the spirit of place". The main interest in considering an urban monastery program is to create a place that embodies the spirit and culture of Tibetan Buddhism in the context of urban Washington, D.C. Given Tibet's unique culture that has developed over centuries without much Western influence, and it recent history of Chinese rule, religious persecution and infiltration of its language, culture and environment, the challenge of this program is to represent the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism in a modern language of architecture. / Master of Architecture

No / Conventional models of economic behavior have failed to account for a number of observed empirical regularities in macroeconomics and international economics. This may be due to preference specifications in conventional models. In this paper, we consider preferences with the ¿spirit of capitalism¿ (the desire to accumulate wealth as a way of acquiring status). We analyze a number of potential effects of international catching-up and the spirit of capitalism on savings, growth, portfolio allocation and asset pricing. Moreover, we obtain a multi-factor Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). Our results show that status concerns have non-trivial effects on savings, growth, portfolio allocation, asset prices and the foreign exchange risk premium.

[pt] Dentro do epistolário paulino a Carta aos Romanos é consagrada por vários estudiosos como o testemunho maior da missão do araldo Paulo. Composta por dezesseis capítulos, ela traz em seu bojo, entre outros, temas relevantes como a justificação pela fé, a Lei, a vida no Espírito e a filiação divina. O centro desta Epístola encontra-se aparentemente no capítulo 8 onde se desenvolve um tratado sobre o Pneuma. A presente pesquisa desenvolverá um estudo na unidade literária de Rm 8,14-17 sob a ótica do acolhimento da vida no Espírito que, consequentemente, gera filhos de Deus, tornando o homem herdeiro do Pai e co-herdeiro de Cristo. Todavia, vale salientar que o mistério da filiação divina não era estranho ao povo escolhido, pois Deus era considerado o Pai das Nações e de tudo que fora criado no céu e na terra conforme a TANAK (Gn 1,1-2,4a). Entretanto, com Cristo, é inaugurado uma nova perspectiva sem precedente na história da salvação. Por este viés, essa temática sempre será atual, haja vista que os textos neotestamentários têm como meta maior a epifania da pessoa de Jesus Cristo, Filho de Deus, que em si é a plenitude da revelação do Pai na vida do cristão (Jo 12,45; 14,6-11). Desta forma, em Cristo por intermédio do Espírito Santo, foi-nos dado a possibilidade de participar da vida divina, que no Batismo recebemos e nos permite a intimidade filial para gritarmos Abba Pai. Por fim, toda essa reflexão somente nos foi possível pela riqueza que encontramos nas ferramentas utilizadas, proporcionadas pelos métodos histórico-crítico, retórico e a vasta contribuição literária disposta em dicionários e comentários exegéticos. / [en] Within the Pauline epistolary the Letter to the Romans is consecrated by several scholars as the greatest testimony of the mission of Araldo Paul. Comprising sixteen chapters, it brings in its bulge, among others, relevant themes such as justification by faith, the Law, life in the Spirit and divine filiation. The center of this Epistle is apparently in chapter 8 where a treatise on spirit is developed. The present research will develop a study in the literary unit of Rm 8,14-17 from the viewpoint of the reception of the life in the Spirit that, consequently, generates children of God, making the man heir of the Father and co-heir of Christ. However, it is worth noting that the mystery of the divine sonship was not foreign to the chosen people, for God was considered to be the Father of Nations and everything created in heaven and on earth according to Tanak (Gen 1,1-2,4a). However, with Christ, an unprecedented new perspective is inaugurated in the history of salvation. By this bias, this theme will always be current, since the New Testament texts have as their main goal the epiphany of the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who in himself is the fullness of the revelation of the Father in the life of the Christian (John 12,45; 14,6-11). In this way, in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we were given the possibility to participate in the divine life, which we received in Baptism and allow us the filial intimacy to shout Abba Father. Finally, all this reflection was only possible to us by wealth which we find in the tools used, provided by historical-critical, rhetorical methods and the vast literary contribution set forth in exegetical dictionaries and commentaries.

The content of this dissertation delineates the crucial and incisive role of the Holy Spirit in terms of God's grand and majestic acts of creation, that is the creation of the multiversity of universes, redemption that is the cross, the exemplar of Christ in self­ denial, reconciliation and restoration, and his resurrection, that is self-empowerment, self-renewal and self-fulfillment observed within the context of God, being human and the physical organic environment as it interacts with the human acts of personal and social responsibility observed within the context of a five dimensional approach of self-actualization, self-denial, self-empowerment, self-renewal and self-fulfillment, ingested into ones identity, internalised and witnessed as meaningful daily praxis, seen through the prism of the cross and the resurrection. A didactic method has been followed to engender insights into and conviction regarding the relevance of the subject for our present day and a hortatory method to exhort to an obedient response and to urge an appropriate action. / Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)

The heart of Pentecostal practice has always been an experience of the Holy Spirit. These experiences are often claimed to have the direct guidance of the Spirit and form the decisions and actions that result in the ongoing of the development of practices and doctrine. It is my contention that the third and fourth so-called waves of the Spirit are not truly waves of the Spirit, neither are they new. They are the rebirth, albeit in a new manner, of three disappointing and tragic movements of past Pentecostal history, namely the (New) Latter Rain, the Shepherding Movement, and the Prosperity Movement. I maintain that these two waves do not follow a solid Pentecostal doctrinal stand of an experience in the Holy Spirit of separability and subsequence, neither do they draw their doctrinal stand from the book of Acts, but rather the Synoptic gospels. Unfortunately, even though Pentecostal scholarship is on the rise, the majority of the prolific writers of these last two waves are extremely eisegetical in regards to their dealing with the Word of God. They claim vision and direction from Heaven, as opposed to an exegesis of the canon of Scripture. I maintain that these two, so called waves of the Spirit are not Heaven sent but man conceived and thus dangerous heresy to the church. `I believe that courage is the most important virtue, the foundation that underlies and gives realty to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage we become conformists. Conformity is not the fibre good and courageous leaders are made of… Do not be frightened by the aloneness that may come with your holding unpopular positions. It is in aloneness that wisdom will visit you and smile upon you'. These are not, as a theologian might be entitled to expect, the words of Elijah or Jeremiah. They are quoted from a speech given in 1999 by Mamphela Ramphele, vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town. Her context was the silence that has so often fallen on African societies once liberation has taken place. It is just such silent acquiescence, she insists, that allow former `heroes of the struggle' to become despots and dictators. Her words are challenging to Pentecostal theologians for at least two reasons. The first and more mundane is that Pentecostalism is most vibrant today in precisely those countries, which can be termed `postcolonial'. The second, and to my mind the most relevant to the movement, is that Pentecostalism was at its beginning a powerful spiritual force because it inherited an ethos of radical difference and because its proponents were unflinching in refusing to be co-opted into any other agenda than the one for which they knew they had been empowered by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. In this sense it was a prophetic religion, a religion similar to that of Elijah and Jeremiah. It is my plea then in this presentation that the so-called `postcolonial' countries will not swallow this new error, which has been called the new Pentecostal rhema from Heaven, which stems, as do so many new theological trends from the Western world. The new emerging Pentecostal Charismatic churches, particularly of the Third World need to have the courage not to be conformists, for such is not the fiber good and courageous leaders have. The hermeneutical pneumatology of the Pentecostal tradition has always been questioned. The early Pentecostals did not even bother to develop a theological hermeneutical position of a subsequent experience of the Spirit; they accepted their experience as from God . When they did begin to develop a Pentecostal theology it was often ridiculed as being primarily experiential, thus in the minds of most, devoid of Biblical theology. Fifty years after the outpouring of the Spirit at Azusa Street many Pentecostal scholars began to re-examine the pneumatology of Luke's writing. In the latter part of the 20th Century many Pentecostal scholars came into their own, examining and challenging many of the previously accepted conclusions of theologians, in regards to the Classical Pentecostal doctrinal position . Their position was that there was a separable and subsequent experience of the Spirit following salvation, which was accompanied by the initial evidence of speaking with other tongues. The initial evidence was for a few, and still is for some, questionable evidence. Such a position stood in opposition to those who declared that there was no second experience of the Holy Spirit for any person other than salvation. If those who believed in the `conversion-initiation, which included the baptism in the Holy Spirit' were indeed correct, then everything that Luke talks about in relation to pneumatology in his two-volume work is totally in relation to salvation. This was the theological pneumatological position prior to Classical Pentecostalism. It did and has resulted in many theological challenges. Scholars who take this position do so on the premise that Pentecost is more of a historical situation for the church. However scholars convinced of the Classical Pentecostal position are refusing to accept this position and have and are continuing to develop an exegetical position for a secondary work of the Holy Spirit in a person's life. This is my personal position made vitally real for me since I did not grow up in a Pentecostal church setting, but rather came into the Pentecostal experience in my early 20's. It is my contention that the theological impact of Christ's ascension prior to the public ascension witnessed in Acts 1 has not been fully examined. Few scholars have dealt with the typological fulfillment firstly, of the work of the High Priest as seen completed in the life of Jesus Christ, or secondly, of His fulfillment of the first four feasts which the Jews were commanded to keep. Both of these aspects very clearly enhance and form a clear indication that the classical Pentecostal theology was and is correct in speaking of a separable and subsequent work of the Spirit following a clear salvation experience. I will seek to elucidate this by an examining the historical background of the first two waves of the Spirit, followed by a preview of the work of the Holy Spirit as seen in the canon of Scripture with emphasis on the New Testament. I will follow this by the development of the idea of regeneration in the New Testament. Finally I will examine Lukan writing in regards to the experience known as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. These chapters will then serve as a base for comparison with the material, which will follow. In the late 20th and early 21st century the Classical Pentecostal doctrine has been challenged by the last two charismatic waves of the Spirit, both of which have spawned a plethora of writings. It is my contention first; that the traditional Pentecostal understanding of the authority of Scripture has been abandoned in that now experience takes precedence over Scripture. Secondly it is clear that these last two waves do not fall within the same parameters as the first two waves in their understanding of a doctrine of separability and subsequence, since they revert to a pre-Classical Pentecostal theological position of only one experience of the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, in a day when Pentecostal scholarship is seeking to become acceptable in their exegesis, the authors of these waves are almost totally eisegetical. The question needs to be asked `Have they subtly taken on a title to glean a following?' It is thus my contention that a survey of these waves shows that they have no common ground with the initial two waves of the Spirit. The indication is that they have deliberately chosen a different Biblical basis and thus disqualify themselves from the Pentecostal Charismatic stream. I will seek to elucidate this by examining the historical background of the last two waves of the Spirit, followed by an examination of the Pentecostal hermeneutic and their lack of hermeneutics, as seen so clearly in their writings. This will be done by pointing out the comparisons to the latter two waves of the Spirit both in theory and in the voluminous writing, which are largely based on eisegesis. The stated desire to `have church without making anyone sick' has broached and taken the movements far into left field. Finally, it is my contention that the third and fourth waves of the Spirit are not new at all. They are simply a rebirth of three disappointing and tragic movements in Pentecostal history. Thus I hope to clearly substantiate that the third and fourth wave of the Spirit are not really waves of the Spirit at all. They are not such in terms of their Biblical theological basis, neither are they such exegetically. They are simply the result of those desirous of the moving of the Holy Spirit who have reached back into the past and reintroduced past aspects of renewal, which unfortunately were man centered and resulted later in much havoc among Christians. I will seek to elucidate these facts by an examination of the history and practice of the (New) Latter Rain, which still haunts Saskatchewan, Canada where tragedies still exist, and the Shepherding movement out of Florida, which after a few years was denounced even by the leaders and finally totally disbanded. Then, finally the Prosperity Movement, which rose and fell as an unacceptable, illegitimate deduction of so called truth of the canon. One hopes and prays that the tragedies in lives will not live to haunt the church if Jesus tarries. We do not want the "heroes of spiritual struggles" to become the despots and dictators of the Pentecostal churches in the Third World. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Church History)

Pentecostalism, which developed its essential character during the classical period of 1901-1916, has many significant contributions to make to modern theology. Often viewed as a type of fundamentalism, it is actually a theological tradition in its own right that deserves consideration along with the other two major streams of protestantism, conservative evangelicalism and more liberal ecumenical-mainline thought. Although it emphasizes the experience of the Holy Spirit, pentecostalism is highly Christocentric as is evidenced by its foundational symbol of faith, the fourfold gospel of Jesus as savior, healer, baptizer, and coming king. This work examines how the pentecostal fourfold gospel, as a functional, from below Spirit Christology, anticipates and intersects with trends in twentieth century ecumenical theological thought. The result of the study is the articulation of a fuller, more holistic understanding of the work of Christ in salvation in the world today. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M. Th. (Systematic Theology)

This study is about the identity of Coloured Pentecostals living in Retreat, Western Cape. It concerns the effects which social change has upon boundary markers and worldview. It uses Robert Schreiter's semiotic approach to culture. Schreiter says that social change along with boundary markers and worldview are the basis for changing identities. This study applies Schreiter's approach to a case study to see if it will work. The study considers the traditional Coloured Pentecostal Culture's identity represented by the older generation of Pentecostals in Retreat. It then considers some responses to those traditional boundary markers and worldview given primarily by the younger generation of Pentecostals. It then suggests some possible solutions to the problems which have been identified as the reasons for the changing cultural and religious identity of the Coloured Pentecostal Culture . / Missiology / M.Th. (Missiology)

In this paper I aimed to explore the bodily experiences and expressions that Christian charismatics interpret as religious.  The so-called presence of God and the so-called gifts of the spirit were in focus in the gathering of information. My purpose was to find out how the social community of the Christian charismatics affects the subjective bodily experiences that are interpreted as religious by the individual. The main questions were: 1: How do Christian charismatics describe religious experiences and their effect on the body? 2: What bodily expressions of religious experience can be observed in Christian charismatic contexts? 3: Is there a common way of expressing the experience of God's presence (individually or in a group) and how, in this case, can any resemblance be explained? The methods used to answer these questions were qualitative interviews and participant observations, which then were analyzed by the anthropologist Thomas J. Csordas theory of embodiment. By applying his theory on a Swedish-based material I hope to bring a new perspective into the research on this subject and inspire to further research and curiosity about Christian charismatics in Sweden. In this essay phenomena such as falling in the spirit, speaking in tongues, and healing were analyzed. Some of the phenomena, which are interpreted as presences of God by the believer, could be explained according to the theory of embodiment, but some could not. The similarities of bodily religious experiences among different groups of Christian charismatics can be explained with the concept of habitus. That is because even though the groups may have long distances between them, the still share behaviors and belief systems , for example the Bible, as common ideas in the global habitus of Christian charismatics.