The thesis concerns an aspect of poetic imagination in the works of 17th century metaphysical poets and examines the way these poets were influenced by the Church of England. In addition, it identifies elements of Anglican spirituality in their works. The first section analyzes the concept of Christian spirituality and the specifics of Anglican spirituality. Anglican spirituality is closely linked with the historical origins and development of the Anglican Church. In the second section, there is a description of poetic imagination and the relationship between poetics and spirituality. The thesis describes the concept of so-called metaphysical poets. The works of three selected authors are examined to identify poetic expressions of general, theological issues. Theological themes emphasized in Anglican spirituality are compared with those expressed in metaphysical poetic imagination. The aim of this thesis is to find the role of poetics in general, theological discourse.

The aim of this project is to investigate the proper response of theology to the Christian God who, as revealed through revelation, is Being-in-act. This project takes seriously the idea posited by Shakespeare, that totus mundus agit histrionem, and upon this stage ‘all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.’ If, then, God’s Being is in act, and as so many have deduced, life and death are enveloped within the drama of everyday, then, might it be possible that our theological endeavours would prosper through a dramatic rendering? In light of this, the project seeks to illumine that it is beneficial for both the Church and society, to realise how drama can be, and is, fruitful for our theological endeavours. God is Being-in-act, and through His revelation, He invites humanity to enter into and participate in His action. In light of the aforementioned, then, theology must contend with the implications for its practices, which, as is being argued, are benefited most through a full embrace of the dramatising of theology. The thesis is situated in the recent movement of our theological endeavours that recognise the profundity of the dramatic and its ability to illuminate God’s action and call to action from theology, the Church and society. Moving forward from the seminal work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, and set forth in the context of the theologies of Balthasar and Karl Barth, this project argues that it is through the dramatising of theology that theology is best equipped to illumine God’s desire for humanity’s participation in His Theo-drama. The dramatising of theology is a natural response to God’s Being-in-act; it is the natural movement of theology’s response to God’s action which calls for an active response on our part. Current examples of today’s theological movement towards the dramatic can be seen in such authors as Max Harris, Trevor Hart, Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Horton, Todd Johnson and Dale Savidge, Ben Quash, Kevin Vanhoozer, Samuel Wells and N.T. Wright. This project hopes to contribute to the movement towards the dramatising of theology.

This study examines the role of history in the writings of the English deists, a group of heterodox religious controversialists who were active from the last quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century. Its main sources are the published works of the deists and their opponents, but it also draws, where possible, on manuscript sources. Not all of the deists were English (one was Irish and another was of Welsh extraction), but the term ‘English Deists’ has been used on the grounds that the majority of deists were English and that they published overwhelmingly in England and in English. It shows that the deists not only disagreed with their orthodox opponents about the content of sacred history, but also about the relationship between religious truth and historical evidence. Chapter 1 explains the entwining of theology and history in early Christianity, how the connection between them was understood by early modern Christians, and how developments in orthodox learning set the stage for the appearance of deism in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Each of the following three chapters is devoted to a different line of argument which the deists employed against orthodox belief. Chapter 2 examines the argument that certain propositions were meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false irrespective of any historical evidence which could be marshalled in their support, as it was used by John Toland and Anthony Collins. Chapter 3 traces the argument that the actions ascribed to God in sacred history might be unworthy of his goodness, beginning with Samuel Clarke’s first set of Boyle Lectures and then progressing through the writings of Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and William Warburton. Chapter 4 charts the decline of the category of certain knowledge in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of probability theory, and the effect of these developments on the deists’ views about the reliability of historical evidence. Chapter 5 is a case-study, which reads Anthony Collins’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) in light of the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, a coda provides a conspectus of the state of the debate in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focusing on the work of four writers: Peter Annet, David Hume, Conyers Middleton, and Edward Gibbon.

The nature of trials, tests, and temptation in the Epistle of James has been extensively debated in New Testament scholarship. However, scholarship has underexamined the tension between the author’s mitigation of divine agency in testing ( Jas 1:13–14) and the author’s appeal to well-known biblical testing narratives such as the creation account (1:15– 18), the Binding of Isaac ( Jas 2:21–24), and the Trials of Job ( Jas 5:9–11). is juxtaposition between the author’s theological apologetic and his biblical hermeneutic has the potential to reveal either the author’s theological incoherence or his rhetorical and hermeneutical creativity. With these tensions of divine agency and biblical interpretation in mind, this dissertation compares the Epistle of James against other examples of ancient Jewish interpretation, interrogating two points of contact in each Jewish work: their portrayals of the cosmic drama of testing, and their resulting biblical hermeneutic. The dissertation assembles a spectrum of positions on how the divine, satanic, and human roles of testing vary from author to author. These variations of the dramatis personae of the cosmic drama exercise a direct influence on the reception and interpretation of the biblical testing narratives. When the Epistle of James is examined in a similar light, it reveals a cosmic drama especially dependent on the metaphor of the divine law court. Within this cosmic drama, God stands as righteous judge, and in the place of divine prosecutor stand the cosmic forces indicting both divine integrity and human religious loyalty. These cosmic and human roles have a direct impact on James’ reading of biblical testing narratives. Utilising an intra-canonical hermeneutic similar to that found in Rewritten Bible literature, the Epistle appeals to a constructed ‘Jobraham’ narrative in which the Job stories mitigate divine agency in biblical trials such as those of Abraham, and Abraham’s celebrated patience rehabilitates Job’s rebellious response to trial. In conclusion, by closely examining the broader exegetical discourses of ancient Judaism, this project sheds new light on how the Epistle of James responds to theological tensions within its religious community through a hermeneutical application of the dominant biblical narratives of Job’s cosmic framework and Abraham’s human perfection.

Cette dissertation a pour objectif de fournir un éclairage nouveau sur la cosmologie philonienne à la lumière de la littérature apocalyptique judéo-chrétienne. Il s'agit reposer la question du lien entre Philon d’Alexandrie et la tradition apocalyptique judéo-chrétienne dans une optique qui se veut à la croisée de l’histoire des religions et de l’histoire de la philosophie. Après délimitation du corpus, on y aborde la question du rapport au mythe et à la théologie. La place est ensuite faite à la question des intermédiaires célestes (Anges, Logos, Esprit), ainsi qu’à la liturgie. Ce point nous mène à la figure du messie et aux raisons du silence de Philon à ce sujet. Cette étude entend ainsi porter un regard nouveau sur la pensée d’un auteur majeur de l’Antiquité qui accomplit la première grande synthèse entre le judaïsme et l’hellénisme, anticipant ainsi l’émergence des conditions métaphysiques du christianisme. / Doctorat en Philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study examines the rise, development, and crisis of theological encyclopaedia in nineteenth-century Germany. As introductory textbooks for theological study in the university, works of theological encyclopaedia addressed the pressing questions facing theology as a ‘science’ (Wissenschaft), a rigorous, critical discipline deserving of a seat in the modern university. The project of theological encyclopaedia, I argue, functioned as the place where theological reflection and the requirements of the institutional setting in which that reflection occurred—here the German university—converged. I explore its roots as a pioneering idealist model for organizing knowledge in the German university system in the late eighteenth century. I focus especially on Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the father of modern Protestantism and principal intellectual architect of the University of Berlin (1810). Schleiermacher’s programme transformed the scholarly theological enterprise into one defined in terms of science. That transformation laid the groundwork for the later historicization of theology, which I investigate in the two predominant ‘schools’ of German university theology in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Hegelian ‘speculative’ school and ‘mediating theology’ (Vermittlungstheologie). Among the latter, I emphasize the remarkable international influence of the Swiss-German Karl Hagenbach (1801–74), whose theological encyclopaedia was among the most widely read theological books in German-speaking Europe from the 1830s through World War I. Finally, I analyze the project’s downfall in the context of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, beset by radical disciplinary specialization, a crisis of historicism, and the attacks of dialectical theology. Throughout, I contend that theological encyclopaedia represented the institutionalization of the idea of theology as science, which furnishes an explanatory grid for understanding the relationship between theology and the university. The project resulted in a powerful synthesis that fundamentally shaped the reigning theological paradigms in nineteenth-century Germany and beyond.

The question I address is: how might a theology of authority be conceived in the light of questions raised by what is termed 'post-modernity'? Is it possible to articulate a theology of authority coming to the church community 'from God' that avoids an oppressive and alienating heteronomy? The thesis explores the question of authority as of vital importance in the sociological dimension of religion, calling for legitimisation (in light of claims made for itself) and as obligatory in the theological sphere. For this reason the project involves two methodologies (theological and sociological/ethnographic). While this investigation is relevant to all sections of the Christian church, particular attention is paid to Baptist churches in the UK, since they hold a concept in their tradition that I suggest is valuable in answering the question of the thesis, namely that of covenant. Within the Christian tradition there is an inner 'problematic' relating the personal authority of Christ to the forms of institution (church) and text (scripture). I explore this with a brief survey of theological authority as found in the fourfold foundation of scripture, tradition, reason and experience. From this is developed a brief theological and Christological reflection on divine authority and covenant theology as found in Karl Barth and his response to the 'inner problematic'. Within contemporary culture I view authority through the lens of so-called 'postmodernism', identifying four challenges to the notion of 'external authority' (all of which exemplify a move from the external to internal, and objective to subjective approaches to authority). This is further explored by means of qualitative research with one-to-one interviews conducted in a Baptist church in York. This data is reflected upon by means of ethnography and 'judicious narratives', especially in dialogue with material from Guest ('congregational study'), Heelas and Woodhead ('subjectivised-self') and Healy ('theodramatic horizon' and 'practical-prophetic ecclesiology'), providing an intersection between the language of theology and sociology. The concept of church as covenant community is explored in Baptist and (more briefly) Anglican traditions, leading to a constructive proposal that both the inner-church 'problematic' and the 'postmodern' challenge to authority might begin to be resolved with the notion of covenant. It is within this context of relationship, human and divine, that the authoritative and revelatory Word of God, the story that is Christ, is found in community and praxis. Here is a 'triangulating' relationship between authority, story and covenant revealing divine authority in a non-coercive way and relevant to contemporary culture.