New Testament / (M.Th.(New Testament))

George Smeaton (1814-89) was the Professor of Exegesis at New College, Edinburgh, for the last 32 years of his life. His three works still in print on the atonement and the Holy Spirit are recognised to represent a statement of the orthodox Scottish Reformed thought of the Free Church at its inception. Smeaton is thus recognised to be one of the last of the ‘old school’ lecturers of New College. His theology, therefore, falls into the traditional Reformed category of federal theology. This thesis studies Smeaton’s pneumatology and demonstrates that, while it is entirely orthodox in line with its Reformed heritage, it advances in four small but significant points to represent a more thoroughly federal pneumatology. The first feature that Smeaton incorporates into his pneumatology is that the Holy Spirit indwelt Adam at his creation, only to deprive Adam of his fellowship at the fall. This anthropology, in light of the prominence that Smeaton gives to the federal analogy of the two Adams, obviously draws attention to the role of the Spirit in the incarnation. It is, therefore, no surprise to find the role of the Spirit central in Smeaton’s Christology. The second feature is that it is the Spirit who is the executive of the communication between the two natures of the incarnate Christ, thus, thirdly, allowing him to experience the life of the true Spirit-filled person. Finally, the closeness between the Spirit’s work and Christ’s mission prompts Smeaton to call it a conjoined mission. This thesis explores the historical and exegetical foundations of these features of Smeaton, concluding that he does not introduce any radically innovative ideas to federal theology, but brings existing yet underplayed ideas to the fore. In the final chapter the consequences of Smeaton’s federal pneumatology are highlighted.

ABSTRACT DE SPIRITU SANCTO: NOVATIAN OF ROME’S PNEUMATOLOGY IN DE TRINITATE JohnMark Bennett Beazley, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2016 Chair: Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin This dissertation evaluates the pneumatology of Novatian of Rome. Novatian’s pneumatology in De Trinitate is marked by a profound Biblicism and seeks to describe the Holy Spirit as an object of the Christian faith. This approach severely limits how he addresses the ontology of the Holy Spirit, but it does provide a broad scope of how he understood the activity of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 1 sets the context of pneumatology in the third century and describes how Novatian’s pneumatology should be viewed in this context. Chapter 2 provides a biographical sketch of Novatian. It places him in his historical and ecclesiastical context. Chapter 3 examines the pneumatology of those Christian writers who preceded Novatian and whose writings would have been known to him. This chapter provides a context from which to understand how Novatian’s pneumatology fits with those who preceded him. Chapters 4 and 5 examine Novatian’s pneumatology in detail. Chapter 4 demonstrates that Novatian was primarily concerned with describing the Holy Spirit as the object of Christian belief through the biblical language about the Holy Spirit, which focused upon the activity of the Holy Spirit within the church on behalf of the Son. Chapter 5 shows that while Novatian did not call the Holy Spirit by the term “God,” he implicitly and inescapably affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 6 briefly addresses Novatian’s pneumatology in light of his predecessors along with the legacy of his pneumatology in De Trinitate. This chapter demonstrates that Novatian’s pneumatology was used by both orthodox (Gregory of Elvira) and heretics (Pneumatomachi).

There must be certain reasons why one embarks on a study of the Holy Spirit. The first is perhaps because there is a need today for a Biblical doctrine of the Spirit. The second follows from the first, for there is a need for a deeper knowledge of the Spirit and His work. He is the life-giving Spirit, and we need today to be spiritually alive. The third reason for a study of this kind is that we need a deeper understanding of the power of the Spirit in the affairs of men in the world. We have got away from the idea that God works amongst us through His Spirit, and we tend to think more and more of the achievements of man, and the power of the machine to do as we wish. We need to return to the power of the Spirit, and to be instruments of God's wishes. Finally, our Christianity today, in this country, appears to be so lifeless, so stuck in the groove of routine - the interminable bazaars, money raising efforts, and social half-hours - that we have lost the enthusiasm of first century Christianity, the driving force of the Spirit spurring us on to bring the Gospel of Life to the hungry world. We need in our modern experience and our modern condition, to find the powerful enthusiasm, as a result of the Spirit' s working in us, that the early Christians found when they were filled with Him and worked under His guidance. So we undertake the study of the Spirit among the early Church, in the hope that we too may desire to be filled as the Apostles were filled.

This thesis investigates the role of the Holy Spirit within the Syrian baptismal tradition and, in particular, assesses its effect upon the liturgical and theological development of initiation in East and West Syria. Primary material includes the Odes of Solomon, Didascalia Apostolorum and Acts of Judas Thomas; the writings of Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, Philoxenus and Severus of Antioch; as well as the East Syrian and two West Syrian baptismal ordines. This study provides evidence against any notion of an original Syrian baptismal pattern in which a single anointing precedes immersion, and demonstrates that the tradition witnesses to the existence of a variety of practices at an early stage. At the same time, it argues that the Syrian rite was not originally modelled upon the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, nor did its theology undergo an identifiable shift from Johannine to Pauline imagery. Against this background, the incarnational image of the font as womb is identified as the principal characteristic which runs througout the development of the tradition, functioning as the primary symbolic focus for the activity of the Holy Spirit and thereby interpreting the pre-immersion anointing(s) as a ritual preparation for baptismal regeneration by water and the Spirit. The Spirit is seen as active throughout the process of initiation. It is the Spirit who identifies the candidate as belonging to Christ; it is the Spirit who prepares and brings to new birth with Christ in the womb of the Jordan; and, not least, it is the Spirit whom the candidate receives as the eschatological pledge of the final birth with the First-born, from death to eternal life.

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Typescript translation of Synopse des deux regles de Libermann. Translated by Fr. Walter van de Putte

Typescript translation of Synopse des deux regles de Libermann. Translated by Fr. Walter van de Putte

Thesis (M.A.R.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-86).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, 1989. / Abstract. Vita. Catalogue of the published writings of A.B. Simpson: leaves [246]-258. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-282).