Thesis (D. Min.)--Ashland Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract . Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-143).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1994. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-197).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1994. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-197).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-242).

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-37).

Thesis advisor: James F. Keenan / Thesis advisor: Daniel J. Daly / This thesis investigates the morality stemming from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola through the lens of virtue ethics. It argues that if the Exercises are conducted according to Ignatius’ intention, they can lead exercitants to develop moral character in their relationship with God. This thesis is structured around four main chapters: bridging spirituality and morality, vulnerability as a key to understanding the dynamic between exercitants and God in the Exercises, freedom of conscience for being vulnerable to God and others, and the development of virtues rooted in vulnerability, especially humility, prudence, charity, and mercy, through the Exercises. This thesis emphasizes that vulnerability serves as the basis for morality in the Exercises, and virtues provide practical guidance for moral action and reasoning. Through the Exercises, exercitants can recognize their own vulnerability by encountering God’s vulnerability and cultivate virtues in their vulnerability. The Exercises lead them from individual conscience to a realm of interconnectedness with others. The bridge between the Spiritual Exercises and virtue ethics holds significant implications for the formation of Christian character because it fosters the cultivation of virtues consistent with the biblical narrative. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

The thesis is situated in the interface between psychology and Christian spirituality. It explores the experience of women in the South African context making the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius as a Nineteenth Annotation Retreat. The results of the study show that shifts in image of self and image of God are facilitated by the imaginal and dialogical/relational processes in the Spiritual Exercises. A qualitative, hermeneutical approach was taken in which nineteen women were interviewed about their experience of making the Spiritual Exercises. Fifteen of these were interviewed after completing the Spiritual Exercises while four were interviewed during the process. Shifts towards more positive self and God-representations were reported by all but one of the women interviewed. Images of God shifted from distant or ambivalent to positive relational images. Images of self also shifted in concert with shifts in image of self, with the women coming to see themselves as intrinsically valuable and unconditionally loved by God. A marked lessening in defensive processes was also noted. A constructive interpretation of the themes which emerged from an analysis of the data was done from both psychological perspective and spiritual-theological perspectives. From a psychological perspective Object-Relations theory and Dialogical Self theory were used to better understand the mechanisms enabling shifts in God and self-representation. From a spiritual theological perspective, Rahner’s (1960, 1964) relational theology of grace shed light on the spiritual processes in the Spiritual Exercises which facilitate shifts in image of God and self. Imaginal dialogical or relational aspects of the Exercises were found to play an important role in facilitating shifts in both image of self and image of God. The findings of this study provide compelling evidence for the interplay between psychological and spiritual processes in the Spiritual Exercises in particular, and spiritual experience in general, resonating with the work of Meissner (1987, 2003) and Ulanov (2001). It also resonates with Rahner’s (1960, 1964) theology of grace as God’s self-communication which parallels the move in psychology towards the relational which is strongly evident in both object-relations theory and the more recent Dialogical Self psychology. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

Thesis advisor: Brian D. Robinette / This project attempts to respond to Charles Taylor's invitation, made in A Secular Age, for "new and unprecedented itineraries" capable of guiding seekers toward an encounter with God. Today, many Westerners find belief in God difficult if not impossible. This essay begins with an overview of Taylor's secularization narrative and explores the causes and pressures that have made belief in the Transcendent problematic. To respond to Taylor's summons for new itineraries, I turn in Chapters 2-4 to the work of philosopher William Desmond. After introducing readers to Desmond and locating him on a landscape dominated by phenomenologists, I introduce Desmond's metaphysical philosophy and argue that this his thought can be approached as a form of spiritual exercise capable of reawakening a sense of the Transcendent. In Chapters 3 and 4 I engage the work of Pierre Hadot to show how Desmond's philosophy can work to transform the way one perceives the world. Read within this framework, I believe Desmond's metaxological metaphysics provides a series of spiritual exercises needed in an increasingly secular age. Read in this light, metaxology becomes less a philosophy about which one must be informed than a philosophy capable of forming readers to perceive reality anew. In Chapter 5, I draw out some of the theological implications for this interpretation of Desmond's work. In the conclusion, I survey the project and indicate what I consider to be the theological achievement of Desmond's project and potential openings for future engagement with his work. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Galen's Avoiding Distress provides an opportunity for scholars to qualify Galen's philosophical eclecticism because his ἄσκησις to avoid distress intersects theory and practice. My thesis carefully analyzes the theoretical framework behind Galen's claim that he “trained his φαντασἰαι for the loss of all his possessions” as well as the specific practices that constitute this training regimen. I trace the concept of φαντασἰα back to the first philosophical discussions in Plato's Theaetetus-Sophist structure and Aristotle's De anima to answer the questions “What are the φαντασἰαι that he talks about?” and “How do they participate in cognition?” I analyze Galen's On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Affections and Errors, and Thrasybulus to identify Galen's specific practices and relate them to what Galen thinks is the purpose of all humans. My inquiry allows me to argue that while Galen uses his imagination to condition himself not to fear the atrocities of Commodus he subordinates emotional tranquility and practices that promote it to the greater goal of doing good deeds for others.

ABSTRACT Professor Peter Steele S.J. cuts a fascinating figure both in contemporary scholarship and poetic achievement. His work extends over a vast range of genre from poetry to criticism, public address and intellectual journalism. Some of his huge literary output is published, some of it awaits publication, and much of it is either uncollected or held in archival situations. Steele is a writer who matters today not only by virtue of his leading a distinguished academic career, and being a widely published poet, but also because for some two decades he has been a focal figure in the Society of Jesus in Australia and New Zealand and has had extensive experience as he would say 'plying his priesthood' in various British and American Jesuit institutions. This has resulted in a large volume of mostly unpublished writings ranging from prayers, liturgies and reflections to homilies for private and public occasions. The challenge of addressing Steele�'s literary achievement lies in the fact that his spiritual insights form the basis of his poetic, academic, and ethical imagination. This thesis has attempted to identify the core nature of these insights and to trace the way in which they ramify into the world of people, events, and art, especially literature. The basic issue concerns the principle of radiance, how it finds expression through Steele�s major motifs or figures of Jester, Pilgrim Expatriate, Celebrant and Word or Witness, and how this principal operates as the unifying basis of his thought. The thesis tries to investigate this unifying vision within the subtle diversity of the many ways Steele encounters the modern world. In identifying Steele�s structure of thought as a radiant entity focused on the theocentre of God and emanating to the Incarnate God, to the writers of the gospels and epistles, to St. Ignatius, to St. Edmund Campion and to all people especially artists, it has been necessary to shape each chapter in a roughly parallel manner and to organise it according to these stratafications. Each chapter places the individual motif within Steele�'s individual and Ignatian milieux, and examines the function of the particular figure or motif under investigation. Each chapter will then trace the figure (Fool, Pilgrim / Expatriate, Celebrant or Word Witness), as Steele sees it manifest in God, in Christ, in the scriptures, and as he understands it imparted to Campion, to Ignatius as he writes the Spiritual Exercises and to writers (and readers) of literature. Each chapter also has variations appropriate to its subject matter and medium so that for instance the chapter treating Steele�s Pilgrim figure will consider his treatment of it in both p oetics and homiletics and that treating the Word or Witness will predominantly relate to that figure to his critical appraisal of Peter Porter�s p oetry and the organisation of the latter will break from the established pattern of organisation in several major ways. This thesis offers a study of a rich Australian talent operating intellectually, academically, imaginatively and spiritually. If one were to seek to place Steele amongst similarly minded writers one would have to locate him in the community of writers recognised for their classical and contemporary sophistication, writers such as Peter Porter, Seamus Heaney, Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott and Anthony Hecht. In this sense Steele is international rather than Australian in his emphasis; but being a true international he also includes Australia in his thinking.