This thesis investigates the significance of the Church's experience of transcendence in the theologies of Robert W. Jenson (b. 1930) and Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983). Both theologians emphasize the indispensable role of eschatology for Christian theology, but they offer strikingly different accounts of what that means. Following an introductory chapter, the first half of the thesis (chapters 2-4) clarifies the loss of transcendence by following Jenson's and Schmemann's respective theological diagnoses of the chief problems facing the Church in the late-modern West. Jenson argues that a long hidden error in the ontology of the doctrine of God is the underlying cause of the nihilism pervading Western culture. Schmemann perceives secularism as the pervasive cultural backdrop to Christian faith in the West, identifying the betrayal of the Orthodox Church's liturgical experience of the Kingdom of God as the chief culprit. By placing their critiques in dialog with one another I further trace the mutually diagnosed problem of the Church's debilitated eschatology to underlying problems in received ontologies of transcendence. The second half of the thesis (chapters 5-7) explores Jenson's and Schmemann's theological proposals for rehabilitating eschatology. Jenson revises the ontology of God to more adequately fit the God identified by the gospel. His narratival ontology enables him to conceptualize God's transcendence in terms of triune faithfulness through time rather than in metaphysical immunity to time. Schmemann retrieves a symbolic ontology in order to affirm the sacramentality of the world by which God's transcendence can be mystically experienced in the Church's liturgical worship. I argue that Jenson's theological rejection of timelessness rests upon historicist assumptions which Schmemann's eschatological theory has resources to withstand and that, furthermore, theology should preserve apophatic humility rooted in the aseity of God rather than historicize the doctrine of God as Jenson proposes.

ABSTRACT FAR AND NEAR: CHRISTIAN WORSHIP OF THE TRANSCENDENT AND IMMANENT GOD OF WONDERS Charles Thomas Lewis, Jr., Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015 Chair: Dr. Bruce A. Ware "Far and Near: Christian Worship of the Transcendent and Immanent God of Wonders" examines the rhythm of transcendence then immanence represented in divine worship encounters and significant prayers recorded in Scripture. With the objective of determining how transcendence and immanence shapes modern worship services in Southern Baptist churches, this dissertation also documents the goals, values, and objectives that may influence how worship pastors in Southern Baptist churches select and sequence elements to be included in their corporate worship services. Chapter 1 establishes the propensity of the modern church to bypass the transcendence of God while rushing to embrace God's immanence. Chapter 2 discusses the age of immanence and individualism--two modern mindsets permeating religious thinking and corporate worship of many Christians in modern times. This chapter also discusses the residual effects of the loss of focus on God's transcendence--the centralization of man coupled with the displacement of God from his rightful place of centrality in worship. Using the findings of the Worship Design Project 2014, chapter 3 is an empirical documentation of worship praxis and design by worship pastors in the most attended Southern Baptist churches in the United States. Chapter 4 discusses the biblical historical grounding of transcendence including God's transcendent holiness, aseity, sovereignty, constancy, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and timeless eternality. Chapter 5 considers how God's immanent attributes are rooted in and flow from his transcendent characteristics. Chapter 6 is a Christological reflection on how Jesus Christ--God immanently with us--remains transcendent in relationship to his creation and his church. Chapter 7, the central focus of this dissertation, uses biblical data to demonstrate the rhythm of transcendence then immanence represented in divine worship encounters and prayer. Chapter 8 addresses the implications of properly balanced and ordered transcendence and immanence for modern worship service planning and design in the free church tradition. The thesis advanced in this dissertation is that, in divine-human encounters, the Bible demonstrates a repeated pattern of conceptualizing and understanding God in his transcendent otherness both prior to his immanence and as the framework within which his immanence can only be rightly understood and experienced.

This study (1) developed and tested the Socially Supportive Activity Inventory (SSAI) to assess the quantity and quality of socially supportive activities that institutionalized elders receive, and (2) tested the predicted relationships among the variables proposed in the hypothesized causal model, socially supportive activities, self-transcendence, and depression in institutionalized elders. For pilot testing psychometric properties of the SSAI, the content validity was 0.96. Test-retest reliability from a sample of 10 participants yielded stability coefficients of 0.76-1.00, indicating the SSAI is a highly relevant and reliable culturally-based instrument. In the main study, a total of 196 participants were recruited from eight elder care institutions. The results showed an elder's expectation of filial responsibility did not have a moderating effect on the willingness to be/remain institutionalized and on perceived stress. An elder's acceptance of institutionalization was significantly related to perceived stress and indirectly affected depression. The mediator effect of self-transcendence on the relationship between perceived stress and depression was supported. The participation of elderly residents in socially supportive activities demonstrated a moderating effect on the strength of a negative relationship between perceived stress and self-transcendence. In the modified model, an elder's willingness to remain institutionalized, perceived stress, and self-transcendence were significant predictors of depression, accounting for 54.7% of variance. Self-transcendence was the best predictor of depression. These findings contribute to an awareness of importance of culture factors as potential stressors. These findings also help to explain how the psychosocial mechanism of participation in socially supportive activities and the perception of self-transcendence act on depressed elders.

Enumeration of pattern avoiding compositions of numbers Abstract The aim of this work was to find some new results for 3-regular compositions, i.e., for those compositions which avoid the set of patterns {121, 212, 11}. Those compositions can be regarded as a generalization of Carlitz composition. Based on the generating function of compositions avoiding the set of patterns {121, 11} and {212, 11} we derive an upper bound for the coefficients of the power series of the generating function of 3-regular compositions. Using the theory of finite automata we derive its lower bound. We develop this result further by defining 3-block compositions. For the generating function of 3-regular compositions we prove a recursive ralation. Besides that we also compute the generating function of compositions avoiding the set of patterns {312, 321} whose parts are in the set [d]. In the last section we prove that the generating function of Carlitz compositions is transcendental.

The topic of this thesis is a relation between two constitutive aspects of out existence: death and intersubjectivity. The way how to research these issues is an interpretation of main concepts and notions contained in these texts. On the basis of the comparison of these concepts, notions and whole philosophical stands offers this thesis a perspective of comprehension to the topic of death and intersubjectivity.

Traversé par une insatiable soif de spiritualité et de liberté, le XXe siècle est connu pour être celui de la « Mort de Dieu » ou plus explicitement celui du repositionnement de l’homme au centre du divin. C’est dans l’élan de modernité, de renouvellement spirituelle, donc de rejet de toute sorte de tradition religieuse que s’inscrit l’expérience poétique de Pierre Jean Jouve, Georges Bataille et Paul Valéry.Alors que rien ne semble a priori les réunir, ces trois poètes aux idées divergentes et souvent opposées, un croyant iconoclaste et hétérodoxe, un athée hanté par la quête du sacré et un pur rationaliste à la recherche de son « Dieu », ont fait de l’univers de la poésie un lieu de questionnement, d’exploration profonde de l’intériorité et de quête de soi. A travers une extase à la fois poétique et mystique qui fait le lit à l’éros, à l’amour, à la musique et à la mort dans une sorte de jonction entre Immanence et Transcendance, il se dessinent de nouvelles voies d’expérimentation spirituelle qui érigent ces poètes en véritables prophètes de leur époque. / Crossed by insatiable one thirst of spirituality and freedom, the XXth centuryis known to be the one of «God’s Death or more explicitly that repositioning of theman in the center of the divine. It is in the moose of spiritual modernity, of renewal,thus various rejection of religious tradition that joins the poetic experience of PierreJean Jouve, Georges Bataille and Paul Valéry. While nothing seems to gather them, these three poets in the divergent andoften set ideas, an iconoclastic and heterodox believer, an atheist haunted by the questof the sacred and a pure rationalist in search of his "God", made of the universe of the poetry a place of questioning, deep exploration of the interiority and quest of one.Through an ecstasy at the same time poetic and mystic which makes the bedfor éros, love, music and death in a junction of Immanence and Transcendence, it take shape new ways of spiritual experiment which set up these poets as real prophetsof their time.

This thesis is a description and critical analysis of the processes, concepts and imagery of my artwork. I am interested in creating visual narratives, often figurative, in the form of sculpture, collage, and installation. In my work I attempt to call attention to the human condition, specifically addressing sexuality, mortality, psychological issues and power struggles. I incorporate both cultural and personal references and use traditional and non traditional materials and processes that are intended to conceptually inform the viewer further. My intention is to create distinct embodiments that provoke contemplative emotion and in which the object and the aesthetic experience allow us to consider and reconsider who we are and how we progress as a culture.

A solidariedade ressurge, na contemporaneidade, como valor ético e princípio jurídico, envolvendo o desafio da responsabilidade para com o outro. Torna-se fundamental, assim, investigar os diversos sentidos de solidariedade, a qual se mostra relevante para a construção de um espaço comum, marcado pelo respeito à pluralidade e destinado a uma eficaz proteção aos necessitados. Um dos princípios norteadores deste trabalho é a indagação acerca de até onde estamos dispostos a financiar um sistema fundado no princípio da solidariedade. Outro questionamento também se revela essencial: seria preciso buscar, em alguma esfera de transcendência, motivações possíveis para a solidariedade num mundo pós-moderno que parece primar pelo individualismo exacerbado? Na busca por respostas, delineia-se um sentido específico do humano, voltado à responsabilidade para com o outro, sobretudo para com aquele que é estranho, estrangeiro, diferente. A solidariedade, para além da mera noção de tolerância que incorpora a diferença, exige um compromisso coletivo. Alcançar a plenitude polissêmica da solidariedade passa pelo esforço de valorizar a diversidade humana, de modo a viabilizar o agir conjunto, pressuposto basilar da atitude política. / The current resurgence of solidarity appears in the form of ethical values and legal principles and involves the challenge of accepting responsibility for another person. It is important to examine the manifold significance of solidarity in order to consider the possibility of constructing a common space that both respects plurality and ensures the longterm security of those protections for the disadvantaged and vulnerable. The question is: to what extent are we willing to fund a system founded on the principle of solidarity? Might a driver toward solidarity require the invocation of a higher purpose for this post-modern world, so characterized by acute individualism? Would this then reframe the meaning of humanity to include the othered those deemed strange, alien or foreign? Solidarity goes beyond tolerating diversity, it requires a collective commitment evidenced by political collective action.

Hasdai Crescas (1340 -1411), foi filosofo, rabino e homem público, que viveu em um período muito turbulento para as comunidade judaicas ibéricas e provençais, do final da Idade Média. Crescas fez uma crítica veemente ao paradigma aristotélico recebido da falsifa, que foi usado por Maimônides para embasar e provar a existência, unidade e incorporeidade de Deus, conceituado no Guia dos Perplexos como o ser necessário absolutamente transcendente em relação aos seres contingentes. Crescas elabora, em Or Hashem ( Luz do Nome Divino), um conceito alternativo de ser necessário, no qual as duas noções antitéticas de imanência e transcendência divinas se relacionam à distinção, no seio do ser necessário entre sua essência simples e os seus infinitos atributos. A essência simples e inefável do ser necessário se expressa em infinitos atributos no ato eterno e constante de doar na univocidade do ser, seu bem, sua atualidade, aos infinitos entes contingentes. Crescas, advoga que universo apesar de ontologicamente contingente é infinito em sua atualidade. Deus é assim concebido como causa primeira eterna e constante, a enteléquia e Lugar do Mundo. / Hasdai Crescas (1340-1411) was a philosopher, rabbi and public man, who lived in a very turbulent period for the Iberian and Provençal Jewish communities of the late Middle Ages. Crescas made a vehement criticism of the Aristotelian paradigm received from falsifa, which was used by Maimonides to ground and prove the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God, which was conceptualized in the Guide of the Perplexed as the absolutely necessary transcendent being in relation to contingent beings. Crescas elaborates, in Or Hashem (Light of the Divine Name), an alternative concept of being necessary, in which the two antithetical notions of divine immanence and transcendence relate to the distinction, within the necessary being between its simple essence and its infinite attributes . The simple and ineffable essence of the necessary being is expressed in infinite attributes in the eternal and constant act of giving in the univocity of being, its good, its actuality, to the infinite contingent entities. Crescas, advocates that universe although ontologically contingent is infinite in its actuality. God is thus conceived as the eternal and constant first cause, the entelechy and Place of the World.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T11:07:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SONIA MARIZ BORBA.pdf: 888969 bytes, checksum: 2b756a967d637d80754c9d1b7b9f3d31 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-28 / This dissertation proposes a study of the lyric from Gilberto Mendonça Teles and has the goal of show the importance of image and imagination in the creative process of his lyric below the point of view of phenomenology of Gaston Bachelard . For this phenomenologist the poetic image is a new being of language that deeply enlightens our conscience, making the literary creation one of the destinations of the word. This makes the poet is seen as a special issuer, whom diction opens a future of language. The poetic image is established as a kind of valve that releases the perception and provides deep dazzle to the reader, for it is through the imagination that our souvenirs are rebuilt in discontinuous and lacunar temporal movements, providing us,through the work of art, the insertion in the creative moment of revival.The necessary theoretical basis for this work was also based on studies of lyrical from Octavio Paz, which deals with significant multiple faces of the poetic word. These studies assumed a gloomy and unprecedented universe in which the unpredictable meanings are established in the interstices between words. Thus, we seek to show the poetic transcendence in lyric of Gilberto Mendonça Teles, from reverie and expressive power of images that allow the poet a dilation of the semantics of the words, so that they are able to reveal the essence of the lyric voice transformed into language. / Esta dissertação propõe um estudo da lírica de Gilberto Mendonça Teles e tem como objetivo mostrar a importância da imagem e da imaginação no processo criativo de sua lírica sob o ponto de vista da fenomenologia de Gaston Bachelard. Para esse fenomenólogo, a imagem poética é um novo ser da linguagem que ilumina profundamente a nossa consciência, tornando a criação literária um dos destinos da palavra. Isso faz com que o poeta seja visto como um emissor especial, em quem a dicção abre um porvir da linguagem. A imagem poética instaura-se como uma espécie de válvula que libera a percepção e propicia um profundo encantamento ao leitor, pois é pela imaginação que as nossas recordações são reconstruídas nos descontínuos e lacunares movimentos temporais, proporcionando-nos, por meio da obra de arte, a inserção nos instantes criativos da revivência. A fundamentação teórica necessária para a realização deste trabalho baseou-se também nos estudos sobre a lírica de Octavio Paz, que trata da plurifacialidade significativa da palavra poética. Esses estudos pressupõem um universo sombrio e inaudito em que os significados imprevisíveis instauram-se nos interstícios das palavras. Assim, buscamos mostrar a transcendência poética na lírica de Gilberto Mendonça Teles, a partir dos devaneios e da força expressiva de imagens que possibilitam ao poeta uma dilatação da semântica das palavras, para que elas sejam capazes de revelar a essência da voz lírica transformada em linguagem.