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This thesis proposes a reading of Colin Gunton's and Frank Macchia's theology that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit as a necessary component of their respective thought. In this thesis I will argue that for both theologians the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is foundational to understanding their doctrine of God, Christology and Ecclesiology. First, by using a chiastic structure, I will demonstrate that each theologian has an approach to Pneumatology that places a particular stress on the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. By explicating the relationship between Pneumatology and Ecclesiology, it will be evident that both theologians view the Church as the eschatological perfecting work of the Spirit. Second, I will argue that God's being as a being-in-communion stresses the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Since God is the creator of the universe, through Gunton I will demonstrate that the doctrine of God has relevance for an understanding of our reality. Third, I will argue that for both theologians, Augustine's pneumatic analogy of 'bond of love' is adjudged inadequate and needs revision to secure the proper personhood of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is the person who perfects the divine nature and personhood of the Father and Son. Fourth, I will argue that Gunton and Macchia have developed a type of Spirit Christology: Gunton presents a radicalized version of Chalcedon and Macchia formulates his account through 'Spirit baptism.' Throughout the paper, I will demonstrate that Pneumatology is not isolated to establishing the deity of the Holy Spirit, sanctification or individual subjective illumination. Lastly, the doctrine of God, Christology, Ecclesiology and Eschatology cannot be construed without a proper account of Pneumatology that takes into consideration the eschatological and perfecting work of the third person.

In this inquiry I focus on the philosophical framework that could guide educational programmes seeking the moral empowerment of students—the systematic development of the capacity to pursue their own intellectual and spiritual growth and to engage actively in the long-term transformation of their communities, two inseparable aspects of a twofold purpose. Moral empowerment, it is proposed, cannot be achieved by raising political consciousness alone or by pursuing moral education as activity isolated from other components of the overall curriculum. The iterative process through which the individual and the environment are transformed is in need of the full force of knowledge. The inquiry draws on the experience of Fundacion para la Aplicacion y Ensenanza de las Ciencias, FUNDAEC, a Band'i inspired organization in Colombia, in order to identify the essential elements of the evolving conceptual framework under consideration. Nurturing understanding is argued to be central to the desired educational process, necessitating a critical examination of the `subject' and the 'object' of understanding, and how the 'process of understanding' is shaped by them. Nurturing understanding must go hand in hand with the development of a number of spiritual qualities. For this to be achieved, the historical view holding science and religion in opposition should give way to the perspective that they are two complementary systems of knowledge and practice. The integration of knowledge into the content of the teaching-learning experience demands that sharp division between the cognitive and the motivational, between reason and faith, be avoided. The concept of 'capability' discussed in relation to both being and doing, is presented as an effective strategy for this purpose, with the potential to overcome certain dichotomies prevalent in educational thought and practice.

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This thesis is a detailed commentary on Novatian’s chapter 29, where he discusses the Holy Spirit in his work on the Trinity. Chapter 1 of this thesis briefly introduces the reader to the early fathers’ understanding on the Holy Spirit, and chapter 2 introduces the reader to Novatian specifically. Chapter 3 of this thesis is a detailed commentary on chapter 29, which is dedicated specifically to the Holy Spirit. The final chapter of this thesis examines the concepts discussed in chapter 3 with the intention of showing Novatian’s work to be the height of pre-Nicene pneumatology.

The fundamental structure of reality as inherently relational is not foreign to the Christian Scriptures, or early Christian tradition, as evident in the emergence of the theological relational dynamic of perichoresis. We find a precursor to this view of reality in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus prays that "they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us" (17:21). In an attempt to describe the relational structure and unity of the Trinity, John Damascene and other Church fathers employed the concept of perichoresis to signify the mutual interanimation and dynamic reciprocity of the divine persons. I shall argue that the unity expressed in this relation is an irreducible relational dynamic that simultaneously affirms both the individuality and mutuality of persons. Furthermore, this dynamic is the force that constitutes and sustains all Creation and, a fortiori, human beings themselves. In addition, I suggest that the fundamental drive within the world and humans is to relate perichoretically (love). In so doing, I address an omission in the literature, noted by Colin Gunton, that humans, created imago Dei, have never seriously been considered perichoretic in nature. This thesis attempts to redress this gap in the literature by arguing that humans are in "perichoretic reciprocity," that is, they stand in relation to one another in terms of perichoresis. As such, perichoresis represents an irreducible relational dynamic that maintains the person's distinctive identity in relationship while at the same time constituting them qua persons from within the living formative matrix of the relational unity itself. To help develop this understanding I turn to Søren Kierkegaard, for whom this mutuality becomes a positive third term that intensifies the polarities. That Power that constitutes relationship is He who is 'before all things, and in Whom all things hold together' (Col 1 : 17). By formulating the dynamic of relationship this way, I challenge the conventionally understood dual structure of relationality, 'subject-object', and posit instead an alternative tripartite consideration of subject-relationship-subject. By positing this tripartite relational structure, I am positioned to draw upon the logic of spirit developed in recent Trinitarian theologies and explore the fundamental dynamic within perichoresis--analogia spiritus-the non-reflexive transformational dynamic facilitating personal holistic change and meaning from with the living dynamic of the relationship. In essence, I am proposing to draw upon developmental and social constructivist theory, and related human sciences in order to understand human being as differentiated unity; this in turn opens to the possibility of relational dynamics active in human as spirit that can be analogically correlated to God's reciprocal trinitarian and Eternal activity as Spirit. This thesis considers the dynamic of perichoresis in the following ways: 1. In the construction of meaning. Using a hermeneutical approach, I inquire into the holistic nature of theological knowledge and method, contrasting Nancey Murphy's theological use of I. Lakatos' s philosophy of science with social construction theorists Kenneth Gergen and John Shotter, who draw from M. Bakhtin. Based on this contrast I propose a methodology that rejects the conceptual and experiential bifurcation found in Murphy, and suggest instead an irreducible holistic criterion of fullness of life. 2. In persons. This section proposes that emotions be viewed as dynamic unified complexities that are ultimately inseparable from knowledge and experience-an attribute of person as spirit. 3. As persons in dialogical relations. The social theory of Alistair Mcfadyen and his dialogical consideration of openness and closure is correlated with Kierkegaard's understanding of person as infinite and finite, and with his prohibition against their material synthesis. 4. As persons. I consider the theory of James Loder who, using Jean Piaget and Kierkegaard, presents a evelopmentalist perspective of humans as perichoretic, a relationship unto itself which becomes a differentiated unity constituted out of the positively created third term of relationship. 5. In Trinitarian dynamics. I correlate Jurgen Moltmann' s understanding of Trinity and God's Spirit to the dynamic of human spirit. 6. In the perichoresis of time and Eternity. In this penultimate section, I consider divine 'immanence' and 'transcendence' in light of the perichoresis of time and Eternity, and its potential reciprocity within human relational dynamics. Using established categories of human relationality, I consider how human relations might participate through analogia spiritus in God's preeminent process 'before all things'. In conclusion, this research suggests further development in the direction of a relational ontology in which truth, meaning and 'being' are located neither 'out there' (realism), nor 'in here' (idealism), but always within the constituting third term of the immediate relational occurrence itself. If indeed all humans are fundamentally constituted as such, this ultimately presents analogically the possibility of common ground between the Church and culture-the desire to relate perichoreticaly, love.

Thesis advisor: Richard Lennan / Thesis advisor: Richard Gaillardetz / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Typescript. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University, Graduate School, 1928. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 253-258). Vita.

acase@tulane.edu / This dissertation argues that Hegel’s Phenomenology presents a rigorous account of the essential tension between politics and theology that lies at the heart of our striving to be at home in the world. The project has two principal components. The first argues, through a detailed exegesis of Chapter IV on self-consciousness, that Hegel derives both our political nature and our impulse to transcend the mundane from the oppositional structure of consciousness, thereby demonstrating that the two impulses are equally rooted in the ontology of man as a self-conscious being. Contrary to recent interpretations, which have tended to focus on the social conditions of normativity to the exclusion of the religious impulse, I argue that the chapter must be read as a whole, as a continuous elaboration of the essential needs of self-consciousness. Rather than understanding the philosophic postures of the stoic and the skeptic and the religious yearning of the unhappy consciousness as spiritual aberrations, resulting from an inadequate social ordering, I argue that they are developments of the bondsman’s discovery of interiority. The relation between these twain impulses then guides an interpretation of the variegated and multifaceted material encountered in the Phenomenology’s subsequent chapters, which present repeated attempts to reconcile this duality and realize the “concept of spirit.” Following a careful analysis of the first stage of “spirit”—the ethical world—I argue that the Phenomenology shows how man’s effort to achieve a harmonious twofold relation to what is other than himself is the obverse of his pursuit of self-knowledge. Ultimately, the tension between politics and theology is only overcome with the advent of absolute knowing, wherein spirit attains a comprehensive understanding of its essential structure. Hegel’s Phenomenology thus reveals the human quest for just social relations and his longing for the divine to be two facets of his search for self-knowledge. / 1 / Paul T. Wilford

Thesis (M. Div.)--Grace Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-70).