Abstract not available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1988.

The fact that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, as St. Paul maintains in his fifth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, is sufficient reason to be concerned about its unique nature and character, as a community of believers gathered out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, living under the Lordship of Christ. However, a cursory glance at the pages of the New Testament will reveal a vast number of images and symbols used there to describe the Church and its indispensable place in the purposes of God as well as in the lives of believers. A brief consideration of the history of the Church reveals an unexpected factor. Until the time of the Reformation, the Church was accepted as a "given" factor, as a spiritual society in communion with God through Christ, vivified by the Spirit, a congregatio fidelium. It was only after the Reformation and in order to meet its challenge that the self-conscious question was raised as to the unique and distinctive nature of the Church. The tracts written at that time, as may have been expected, were highly polemical in style and not very edifying from the perspective of the doctrine of the Church. In the last one and a half centuries, the Roman Catholic Church, with its Vatican I (1869-70) and its Vatican II (1962-65), has attempted to handle the question of the nature of the Church. At the first Council, the institutional nature of the Church was entrenched in a formidable way, while at the second Council the biblical viewpoints onto the Church were exposed in a pastoral fashion. Likewise in this century, the World Council of Churches emerged from the Protestant side of the Church, being officially constituted in 1948. This factor, too, gives witness to the developing interest in matters relating to ecclesiology, as seen especially in the particular question of Church unity. It is in this time of ecclesiological self-awareness that David Martyn Lloyd-Jones asserted the importance of the Church in evangelical theology. However, rather than supporting the rising notion of ecumenism, he assailed it vigorously for its doctrinal indifference and its lack of commitment to evangelical truths as seen in the Reformed tradition of faith. He, therefore, in contrast asserted a notion of evangelical ecumenism as a unity of churches and Christians based upon a distinct doctrinal basis of Truth found in the New Testament. Being a committed evangelical, it might be imagined that LloydJones would have played down the importance of the Church as has so often been the case in evangelical circles in this century. This pitfall he avoided, while nevertheless maintaining his attention on the individual person in all his teaching. A vast knowledge of the period of ferment, known in the history of the Church of England as the time of the Puritans, enabled LloydJones to focus on that form of the Church understood as "the gathered saints" or the regenerate community. This affected his understanding of membership in the Church and the way people come to faith in Christ. His clear principle is found running through his teaching : it is the believer's relation to Christ that puts him in relationship with the Church, not his connection with the Church that puts him in saving relationship with Christ. This principle has implications for his understanding of the sacraments as being limited to the regenerate as well as for the way discipline is exercised in order to keep the church "pure". It will be seen that Lloyd-Jones was greatly inspired by the example of the Puritans and their doctrine of the church. His distrust of the comprehensive nature of the Church of England and his antipathy to all forms of Roman Catholicism stem from this Puritan desire in him to see a godly church set up in our time, after the pattern of the New Testament church. The phenomenon of Revival, which runs as a theme through much of his preaching, was seen by Lloyd-Jones as a sovereign work of the Spirit of God, in answer to the prayer of faithful people. This awakening he regarded as a way of purifying the church, but also as being a means of genuinely extending the boundaries of the Church, in contrast to much modern evangelism and its methods which he distrusted. This message the Church of today needs to hear, lest it be found building on a foundation other than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1995.

One purpose of teamwork is to pool the skills of individuals in order to produce a better result than that which could be achieved by each individual working on their own. The total effect should therefore be greater. Such sharing of knowledge permits the development of multidisciplinary teamwork. However, the mere existence of a number of different professionals does not guarantee teamwork. Traditional professional boundaries may be threatened and such interchange will only take place in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Multiple individual consultations may lead to confusion about who is responsible for what. It may also lead to the possibility of repetition and overlap. Teamwork therefore is seldom easy but can be satisfying despite some personal loss of professional autonomy. The multi-disciplinary approach is an opportunity for supporting a patient within the framework of realistic expectations for the outcome of any intervention for a patient or family. The biopsychopastoral approach to patient care is intimately associated with psychology, medicine and theology. This approach differentiate the following separate aspects: emotional care, informational care and counselling. Although the final goal of therapy the ultimate well-being of the patient is, each of the discipliners in the team should have separate clear objectives. Problems are however always complex and changing and no person in the team is likely to have all the answers all the time. The biopsychopastoral model provides an approach to the understanding of the physical disease, psychological problems and theological questions, and of their assessment and management. It outlines the way that all the systems function, whether they are biological, psychological or theological and views health care problems in a holistic way. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1999.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1985.

No abstract available. / Thesis(Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.

The turn of the century has brought with it a global population explosion that has never before been experienced by any other generation. In addition to this, for the first time the world is now more urban than rural. Over half of the world's six billion people now live in cities. This study includes two areas of increasing sociological and theological interest during the 21st century, both of which are maligned in many circles: the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, and, the City. The Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is active in 80% of the world's 3300 metropolises. In South Africa a positive growth trend in Pentecostal/Charismatic churches has been noted. As the city grows, so too does the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement. This growth has decisive sociological and theological implications in South African cities since "the pulse of South Africa" is "beating to an urban rhythm". This study is located in the city of Durban where the Urban Foundation1 recorded the highest population growth in the world during the period between 1970 and 1980. The record growth was 100 % (the city with the second highest growth rate was the Nigerian city of Lagos at 93, 7% (in De Beer 1998: 30). In the light of the dynamic urban context of Durban, this study attempts to critically evaluate the transformative praxis of a Pentecostal/Charismatic megachurch in the city. A probe into the subject group's urban presence and social interventions were conducted in order to explore the intentional and unintentional consequences of the church's initiatives. The critical analysis in the study displays the significant role of this faith community as an urban asset and a vital agent of societal change, as well as, its unwitting espousal of neo-liberalism, consumerism and middle-class values. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

In this study, the reading responses of Township Christian women in Southern Africa to Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John are explored. The study concludes that Mary Magdalene, in the Gospel of John can empower the lives of these women. This thesis also compares the role of Mary Magdalene in the death rituals of her time and the roles of the Southern African women in the death rituals of their loved ones. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997

This thesis attempts to answer the following questions: What are the implications of the differences and similarities between the ways in which Catholics and Reformed Baptists understand the concept “church” and the church’s constitution and characteristics, and can a critical evaluation of the agreements and differences in any way facilitate ecumenical dialogue between Roman Catholics and Reformed Baptists? / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

The last three decades has seen a significant shift in the discipline of New Testament studies. In particular we have observed the rise of the social sciences and with them, new methodologies which have eclipsed the more traditional "criticisms" such as form criticism and source criticism. New Testament scholars have realised that we can no longer afford to ignore these advances, and have produced a prolific amount of work which draws upon sociology in particular, and also social anthropology and psychology. Despite the consensus that the social sciences are able to provide invaluable tools for the study of the New Testament, the research that has drawn on these tools has not been without critique. A common thread to these evaluations is that the focus is so exclusively social scientific that the text often becomes lost in the endeavour. When the text is referred to, it is used not unlike a proof text - to prove the suspicions one has already formed. Similarly, we have noticed that those literary studies which relate more to the structure, plot and themes of a text may become so focused on specific words, tenses and so on, that the actual people and context of the text become lost in the exercise. Therefore our challenge is to develop an approach that takes both the social sciences and the text into equal account. This thesis is then an experiment in method. In the quest for an inclusive and holistic approach to the New Testament, we propose to combine Mary Douglas's anthropological "grid/group" model with a series of questions developed by Howard Kee which are aimed at "Interrogating the text". Having discussed a number of methodological considerations we suggest a four step approach which we believe will enable us to analyze the New Testament from a comprehensively anthropological perspective, while at the same time considering the text responsibly and fully. As a test of our methodology we first analyze the complete text of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and then compare our approach with a similarly anthropological method adopted by Stephen Barton in his 1986 article entitled, Paul's sense of place: an anthropological approach to community formation in Corinth (1) which discusses the specific texts of 1 Cor. 1:17-34 and 14:33b-36. The results of this test were mixed. On the one hand our methodology provided a detailed examination of the views held by both the Corinthians and Paul which we were able to contrast. Our use of Douglas's "grid/group" "model also allowed a certain amount of prediction as to how these players would likely have responded to events. However, we discovered that the questions used to "Interrogate the text" are somewhat tedious and repetitive. Therefore, some modification and refinement of these questions would be advocated. (1.) New Testament Studies, vol. 32, pp. 225-246. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1987.