When historical Jesus’ scholar, John Dominic Crossan, stated that Jesus’ resurrection appearances were apparitions and not physical appearances, was it possible to test this conclusion? To what degree are a scholar’s conclusions affected by his presuppositions? Crossan’s definition of history was that it ‘is the past reconstructed interactively by the present through argued evidence in public discourse’ (Crossan 1999:3). The outworking of this view was that the New Testament Gospels are regarded as megaparables, fictitious creations. His application of this view was, ‘Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens’ (Crossan 2012:5). A pattern emerged in which Crossan stated that he was using a method of postmodern interactivism (Crossan 1998a:42). But how is this discerned and articulated with as objective a methodology as possible? What do presuppositions of postmodern, reconstructive, interactivism do to Crossan’s conclusions regarding Jesus’ resurrection appearances? Here the parameters were restricted to literary and historical dimensions of Crossan’s speech acts. The problem investigated was to seek to identify Crossan’s presuppositions and methods in his study of the resurrection of Jesus to determine if they were valid or not when the Gospel evidence on the resurrection was considered. A presupposition-hypothesis method was used to test for verification or falsification, using a critical realist epistemology. A research gap indicated a need for a more objective model to isolate a researcher’s presuppositions of Jesus’ resurrection. The Beaver and Geurts framework (2011) was chosen that led to probability and not certainty about the content of presuppositions. Presuppositional ‘triggers’ were identified from Crossan’s resurrection data. The hypothesis tested was: J D Crossan's presuppositions and methods, in his study of the resurrection of Jesus, are not valid when the Gospel evidence on the resurrection is taken into consideration. Twenty-three presuppositions were discovered and these were developed into 18 hypotheses, three of which were tested: Hypothesis 9: The divine manifestation of Christianity for a postmodern world is deconstruction (his term is reconstruction) and it is not done once for all, but is reinterpreted for each generation’s issues. It was found that reconstruction mutilates the voice of the author by imposing an a priori metaphorical dogmatism on the text. Crossan’s postmodern, reconstructive, interactive hermeneutic was shipwrecked on the ‘rocks’ of contradiction, inconsistency and a self-defeating methodology. Hypothesis 10: The New Testament resurrection narratives are not historical documents. Crossan defined history as a postmodern reconstructionist and reached postmodern, reconstructive conclusions, thus using a question begging logical fallacy. He also did not apply this methodology consistently. Hypothesis 12: It does not matter what a person believes about whether Jesus’ tomb was empty or not; the importance is its meaning, which is independent of factuality. Crossan imposed his own understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection through his use of free play, relativistic, multivalent, postmodern, nonsupernatural stratagem on the text. Thus, Crossan’s idiosyncratic meanings replaced objective, hermeneutical testing of the text of Scripture. Therefore this dissertation’s hypothesis was verified. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / tm2015 / New Testament Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

Recent literature seems to have opened up space for naturalistic theistic metaethics in a contemporary context, as proponents of divine command theories have tended to be restricted to either supernatural or theistic non-natural theories within existing taxonomies of normative theory. While perhaps encouraging for theists, would theism add anything substantive to theories of ethical naturalism? In this paper, I examine this question. I argue that theistic naturalism appears to incur certain objections as well as provide a plausible and explanatory constraint on content for theories of ethical naturalism. As a result, a corresponding challenge to non-theistic variants is raised. / Master of Arts / Realists, roughly summarized, are those metaethicists who believe that some moral propositions have truth values, that some (or at least one) of those propositions turn out to be true, and that if rational agents disagree on the truth value of a particular moral proposition, only one of them has the possibility of being correct. Broadly construed, moral realists tend to fall under one of two “tents”, preferring either naturalism (for which moral properties turn out to be wholly natural in constitution) or non-naturalism (which posits that at least some moral properties have, even if only partly, non-natural constituents as part of their make-up. Theists, who base their theories of morality on some facet of the nature or essence (or commands) of God, have tended to either be relegated in philosophical debate to a characterization of “supernaturalism” or to some seldom visited corner of the non-natural “tent” of moral realism. The former tends to limit theistic engagement in contemporary metaethical dialogue such that it can seem (at times) as if theists and non-theists are talking about two different subjects entirely. On the other hand, a non-naturalistic theory of theistic moral realism saddles the view with some fairly difficult metaphysical and epistemological baggage in the form of powerful objections levied against non-naturalistic theories in general. This paper explores another option for theism in light of very recent work by Gideon Rosen, namely his article examining the metaphysical implications of varieties of moral realism, particularly naturalistic ones. This article has already garnered a general characterization (within metaethical research, writ large) as being a “taxonomy” of naturalistic (and non-naturalistic, for that matter) theories. Specifically for my purposes here, Rosen suggests that divine command theory (and theistic metaethics in general) should be understood as being naturalistic in formulation. This would seem to be advantageous to theists, in that their metaethical theories might avoid either the bounded characterization of supernaturalism or the difficult challenges of non-naturalism. However, the theist, should she avail herself of naturalism in this regard, will need to tread carefully. Given that Rosen has couched his 'taxonomy' in terms of metaphysical grounding, I examine some resultant challenges for naturalistic theistic metaethics, concluding they can be overcome, as well as a related objection to non-theistic naturalism that arise as a result of the same grounding discussion coupled with the resources theists can leverage in a naturalistic context.

Several psychologists have attempted to articulate a theistic psychology or one consonant with their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, confusion over the concept of theism and a persistent naturalism in the discipline create substantial obstacles towards achieving a serious theistic psychology. It is suggested that these challenges can be overcome through examining alternative philosophies and methodologies for scientific psychology, exploring seminal articulations of God's activity, and providing a practical example of a theistic psychological research program.

Recent years have seen increased interest in using theism (the perspective that assumes that God is currently actively in the world) as a conceptual framework for scientific inquiry. This interest has built particular momentum in psychology where several scholars have expressed that traditional naturalistic approaches limit understanding and investigation of psychology's subject matter and thus are insufficient to fully account for human phenomena. Others have previously made the case for the consideration of theism as a legitimate alternative basis for psychological theory, research, and practice. This dissertation begins with that consideration and examines what would be required to move a theistic approach to psychology forward. In other words, if God is assumed to be active in the world (including the psychological world-theism), what difference would that make for the ideas, methods, and practices of psychology? As the current activity of God is the foundational assumption of theism, clarity about what that activity would entail is especially essential for those seeking to develop a theistic approach to psychology and to describe how their discipline would be different from that perspective. Unfortunately, there is currently a lack of clear and explicitly articulated conceptions of God's actions in and for psychology. This dissertation provides a conceptual analysis of the activity of God that synthesizes disparate approaches to divine action into a tentative conceptualization or taxonomic schema. This schema organizes the scholarly literature from across several major traditions into six major heads and elucidates multiple subordinate concepts. The conceptualization serves as an orientation to important issues such as strong v weak theisms, the limitations of naturalism, and practical theistic applications for psychology. Detailed illustrations of these concepts as applied to psychological theory, research (both in the qualitative and quantitative modes), and practice further demonstrate the utility of such a conceptualization. These examples provide a specific focus on the unique contributions of a theistic perspective over and against those of naturalism.