Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-162).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-303). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-196).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2003. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-146).

In this thesis I examine the Holy Grave monument located in the St. Catherine chapel of Strasbourg cathedral, erected by Bishop Berthold von Bucheck sometime between 1346 and 1348. This sculptural sarcophagus currently exists in fragmented form in the Musée de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame; only the four relief panels of the sleeping guardians, the gisant of Christ, and some fragments of the baldachin remain of the original monument. Scholars have been able to ascertain the placement and probable appearance of the Holy Grave based on traces of three lancet bays, wall paint, and bolt holes discovered along the west wall of the chapel during twentieth-century excavations. The numerous copies that the St. Catherine Holy Grave inspired throughout Strasbourg and the surrounding area attests to the significance of the monument within the larger Holy Grave tradition. The Strasbourg Holy Grave functioned liturgically as a prop used by the clergy to reenact the drama of the resurrection during Holy Week. I argue, however, that the monument's permanence, relative accessibility, and pathos-inspiring imagery suggest its use on a more frequent basis. Through its isolation of scenes from the biblical narrative and its visualization of complex mystical metaphors, the Holy Grave at Strasbourg cathedral--and thus also the numerous copies it inspired--reveals its use as an object for personal devotion, much like the group of Rhenish Andachtsbilder that also flourished at this time. The changing beliefs concerning Christ's Passion, the nature of the Eucharist, and the understanding of death and the afterlife are reflected in the style, iconography, and didactic message of the Holy Grave monument. The influence that the mendicant orders and Rhenish mystics had on the spiritual instruction of the laity in Strasbourg points to the understanding of this monument as a tool to aid the faithful in achieving union with God. The popularity of Holy Graves in and around Strasbourg ultimately illustrates the medieval desire for proximity to the divine. As the emphasis on Christ's suffering and death grew throughout the devotional practices of the fourteenth century, art forms like the Holy Grave monument at Strasbourg cathedral increasingly focused on engendering pathos in the medieval devout. The Strasbourg Holy Grave's liturgical, devotional, and anagogical functions coalesce to create a monument that's fundamental purpose consisted of aiding the faithful in their journey toward salvation. / text

By way of introducing this doctrinal study, we have traced in broad outline the effects of Hellenistic philosophy on the theology of the Holy Spirit. After reviewing some of the errors which arose in the identification of the Spirit with the creation of mediating grace, we noted that there was also a tradition which avoided the worst aspects of Greek dualism by identifying the Third Person of the Trinity with grace as a continuing realisation of the mission of Christ in history. The pneumatological theology of Samuel Rutherford manifests this emphasis in 17th Cent. Scotland. His doctrine of the Spirit is consciously integrated with his understanding of the Trinity in general and with Christology in particular. The Son and the Spirit are both sent according to the plan of the Father. The Spirit in His soteriological office is subject to the Son and produces by recreation the life of the Son in those chosen by the Father. Thus regeneration, faith, repentance, and sanctification are the believer's by an actual union of participation in the life of Christ. This activity of the Spirit presupposes not only His use of the Scriptures which He has caused to be written as an unerring revelation of God's will, but also His absolute control of all creation. The Spirit's power in this regard is manifest in every part of the world but most obviously in the Church which He guides and vitalises and in the life of the individual believer who is constantly under His influences. The presence of the Holy Spirit in man does not create a bridge between him and Christ as by a creaturely means nor does it annihilate the believer's personhood or responsibility as by an absolute imputation of Christ's life. Rather, by drawing men into a living union with the living Christ, the Holy Spirit establishes man's true creatureliness and his responsibility in an act of worshipping the triune God in and through Jesus Christ.

The historiography on western European Holy Land pilgrimage effectively ends with the fifteenth century, giving the inaccurate impression that early modern western Christians either did not visit Jerusalem or, if they did, they were not true pilgrims. Though pilgrim numbers certainly declined in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from their medieval heights, both Catholic and, much more surprisingly, Protestant pilgrims continued to make religiously motivated journeys to Jerusalem. Some even publishing pilgrimage narratives on their return. Twenty-five pilgrimage narratives, over half by Protestant authors and published in Protestant territories, were written between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. These largely unexplored sources underscore the complexities of confessional identity in the century and a half following the start of the Reformation. Without exception, the reformers condemned pilgrimage as part of an illegitimate theology of works righteousness. Using both historical and anthropological methodologies, this dissertation addresses the question of how Protestant pilgrims dealt with the apparent conflict between religious doctrine and personal action. It concludes that in the face of such attacks, Protestant pilgrim-authors, mostly Lutherans, attempted to redeem Holy Land pilgrimage by recasting the practice so as to neutralize criticisms and reinforce Lutheran doctrine. The dissertation's first part, comprising a chapter of background on medieval pilgrimage and a second analyzing the expressed motivations for Protestant pilgrimage, examines the ways Lutheran pilgrim-authors justified both traveling to Jerusalem and publishing descriptions of that travel. It argues that Protestant authors believed Holy Land pilgrimage and Holy Land pilgrimage narratives could lead to greater understanding and appreciation of Scripture, and thus to greater faith. The second part of the dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter three deals with the place of Jerusalem in medieval and early modern Christianity, paying particular attention to the Ottoman Jerusalem of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jerusalem encountered by these pilgrim-authors. The next two chapters (four and five) in turn examine the way the Protestant pilgrim-authors describe their encounter with the land and people of Palestine. For many Protestant pilgrims, the desiccated landscape of Palestine, what they saw as its ruined state, was a warning for their readers about God's righteous anger at human sinfulness. Again, the authors emphasize Biblical literacy. Protestant authors constantly read the landscape around them through the Bible, and read the Bible through the landscape. The final chapter explores the descriptions of other Christians residing in the early modern Holy Land, specifically the Franciscans and varied sects of Eastern Christianity. Much scholarly attention has been, for good reason, lavished on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, how Muslims were used as a mirror for creating European Christian identity. In their discussion of other Christians, however, Protestant pilgrims are able to produce a more finely detailed picture of their own particular religious identity. By bouncing their ideas of themselves off their image of other Christians, they come to a clearer understanding of what being a Christian meant for them. In the end, pilgrimage Jerusalem, was part of the larger debate about Christian identity and legitimacy.

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was an ardent defender of the filioque, the doctrine which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Generally, scholarly analysis is restricted to Barth's defence of the filioque in the first half volume of the Church Dogmatics. However, this thesis proceeds on the assumption that a fuller understanding of the filioque in Barth must take into account the genesis and development of the doctrine in his earlier thought. A latent dialectical christocentric pneumatology in the second edition of Romans (1921) provides the material theological support for the doctrine, which subsequently appears in a formal discussion of the filioque in the Gottingen Dogmatics (1924). There Barth speaks of the filioque as a theological analogy of the structure of his developing doctrine of the threefold Word of God. As preaching proceeds from revelation and Scripture, so too the Spirit is to be understood as proceeding from the Father and the Son. / Barth continues to defend and apply the filioque in the Church Dogmatics, though the original connection to the threefold form of the Word of God recedes into the background. Instead, the filioque functions systematically both as a theological guarantee of the unity of the work of the Son and the Spirit and as the eternal ground of fellowship between God and humanity. Barth's most mature view of the filioque is construed in dialectical terms whereby the Spirit is understood to be eternally active in uniting and differentiating the Father and the Son. Furthermore, Barth is atypical in the Western filioquist tradition because he refuses to speak of the filioque in terms of a "double procession"; rather, he views the Spirit as proceeding from the common being-of-the-Father-and-the-Son. Barth's stance on the filioque does not result in a form of pneumatological subordinationism, as critics often maintain. Rather, his adoption of the filioque reflects a tendency toward a superordination of the Spirit over Father and Son in a structurally similar way to Hegel's pneumatology. The thesis concludes by pointing to a tension in Barth's thought which in practice tends toward a conflation of economic and immanent Trinity as he reads back into God the problem and confrontation he perceives to exist between God and humanity.

Victor-Levy Beaulieu's novels all centre around the search for the sacred, a quest for meaning and the Absolute which is accomplished through self-degradation and transgression. In order to define and analyse the need for the sacred that motivates Beaulieu's characters (a need that is at the very heart of the literary project of both the prolific Quebec author and his fictional alter ego, Abel Beauchemin), we will focus on the following novels: La nuitte de Malcomm Hudd (1969), Un reve quebecois (1972) and Oh Miami, Miami, Miami (1973). By means of an analysis of three essential aspects of Beaulieu's writing---the relationship to time and space, the role of women in the male character's universe, and the function of violence---we will show how the author represents, in his novels, the complex interplay of (i) the two modes (the sacred and the profane) of existence, (ii) the bipolar nature of the sacred itself and (iii) the complicity linking taboo and transgression.

G.C. Berkouwer is one of the foremost representatives of the Reformed theological tradition in Europe. His Studies in Dogmatics is a formidable body of work which ranges over the larger part of all Christian doctrine. A lacuna which has however been perceived is the absence of a specific work on the Holy Spirit and consequently, a developed pneumatology. What is evident though, is that Berkouwer's theology is highly trinitarian and that in every saving and gracious action of the Godhead, he demonstrates the life and activity of all the persons of the triune God. Seen from this perspective, the person and work of the Holy Spirit permeates the whole corpus of Berkouwer's writing. Berkouwer is always an authentic and orthodox representative of his own ecclesial tradition as well: commonly a tradition which in keeping with the best of Reformed church genius, has tended to be notable more for its developed Christology than for its pneumatology. Berkouwer's contribution is that he is able to expand and extrapolate on this same tradition without ever deviating from its fundamental teaching. In so doing he has enriched many of its values with new perspectives on the Holy Spirit's active role in salvation. The primary reason why his dogmatical studies have a pertinence for the present is because of the growing influence of other more extreme schools of thought on the flanks of Christianity. There is an active sociopolitical brand of theology on the one extreme that in turn is more than offset by an enthusiastic pentecostal groundswell on the other. In the face of often strident appeals for attention from these wings, Berkouwer counters with an orthodox and highly scholarly analysis of scripture and the traditional doctrinal position of the church. The pneumatology that emerges from his teaching demonstrates the gracious and constant outworking of God in the individual, the church, and the universe. A foundation is laid for encountering and receiving this comprehensive teaching in all its aspects especially in the preached word. The Spirit's activity is especially affirmed in the sanctification of man and in the inspiration of the scriptures. His divine creativity is constantly active not just in the church and its sacraments, but also in His anticipatory work for the future consummation. Whenever Berkouwer has not fully expanded any doctrine, he has nonetheless invariably given sufficient pointers for others to follow and build upon. There remains such that can still be utilized and explored in his writings about the Holy Spirit. / Thesis (M.Th.)--University of Durban-Westville, 1985.