This thesis is a contribution to the work of the Texas Environmental Observatory (TEO), which provides environmental information from the Greenbelt Corridor (GBC) of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. The motivation of this research is to analyze the short-term water dynamic of soil in response to the substantial rainfall events that occurred in North Texas in 2007. Data collected during that year by a TEO soil and weather station located at the GBC includes precipitation, and soil moisture levels at various depths. In addition to these field measurements there is soil texture data obtained from lab experiments. By comparing existing water dynamic models, water balance equations were selected for the study as they reflect the water movement of the soil without complicated interrelation between parameters. Estimations of water flow between soil layers, infiltration rate, runoff, evapotranspiration, water potential, hydraulic conductivity, and field capacity are all obtained by direct and indirect methods. The response of the soil at field scale to rainfall event is interpreted in form of flow and change of soil moisture at each layer. Additionally, the analysis demonstrates that the accuracy of soil characteristic measurement is the main factor that effect physical description. Suggestions for model improvement are proposed. With the implementation of similar measurements over a watershed area, this study would help the understanding of basin-scale rainfall-runoff modeling.

This thesis seeks an orderly set of theological reflections on the declaration that “God is light” (1 Jn. 1:5). Such talk of divine light, this study argues, must begin with the doctrine of God, namely, with God's light in se and his “shining forth” ad extra towards creatures in the darkness of sin and death. This work therefore follows a precise pathway in expounding this theme. Chapter 1 offers a brief survey of the historical and scriptural uses of the concept of light in order to fix its linguistic and conceptual boundaries. Chapter 2 seeks to reflect upon God's light as the light of his own radiant triune identity, as well as offering a preliminary examination of God's economic, covenantal shining forth to creatures. Chapter 3 gives a much more detailed rehearsal of this act of shining forth by an account of God's light as manifest in the economy of his works with which he lovingly elects, reconciles, and illuminates creatures. Chapter 4 proposes that with the treatment of God's shining forth there belongs a treatment of the light of the church called out of darkness, gathered into the “marvelous light” of God, and set to proclaiming the “excellencies” of God. Chapter 5 concludes this study by examining what bearing the reality of God's shining forth as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit might have on the work and call of theology as an activity of the 'illumined mind'.

This thesis seeks to develop an enlarged understanding of justice which reduces future conflict rather than feeding it and which seeks to ground human practices and notions of justice more firmly in divine justice. At the heart of this project is Miroslav Volf’s theology of embrace. The thesis attempts to question what this theology offers to the present day context of Croatia and Bosnia from which it emerged in the 1990s. Firstly, I draw on field work and NGO work to suggest that justice is a pressing issue in post-conflict Bosnia and Croatia, and that current approaches to justice are problematic. I draw on Volf’s work to assess the key problems and suggest that turning to his eschatological vision of justice may provide fruitful answers as to how justice should be pursued for the future. Secondly, I suggest that identity needs to be reconfigured in order that justice might be pursued. I suggest that this should occur along the lines of Volf’s understanding of identity as embrace. Identities can be reconfigured through enlarged thinking. Seeking to shape the other and for the other to shape the self is key to pursuing justice collaboratively. Thirdly, I address the theological roots of Volf’s work in examining the Trinity. I suggest that Volf’s work can offer an understanding of the Trinity which has significant implications for the pursuit of justice. I read Volf’s work as allowing for a sense of justice residing within the Trinity. I seek to draw out the ways in which human life can image the triune life of justice and the parameters of this mirroring. Finally, I propose that the type of justice I have suggested, in collaboration with Volf, means that the pursuit of justice should be centred on restoring right relationships, going beyond what is due and is a continuous process rather than discrete actions.

This study is purposed to show how the Christian and Islamic concepts of monotheism are paradigms and thus, argues that the concept of paradigm, as a method of inquiry, can be a basis for analysing and exposing the conflictive differences and seeming similarities between the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism.  Taking its ideas of the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism from the Christian Trinity and Islamic Tawhid respectively, this study argues that the Christians and Muslims construct their identities from these paradigms as Trinitarian faith and Tawhidic faith respectively.  It investigates the fundamental principles of Islam and Christianity as constituting the <i>belief formulae</i> wrapped in the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism. Therefore, analysing the issues of identity and alterity, the ideological oppositions, and orthodoxy claims intertwined in the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism, this study examines the conflict of interpretations with reference to the nature of God, Christology/<i>’Isalogy</i>, Maryology and the lines of defining Christians and Muslims as ‘binary opposites’.  It further argues for a transformational intersubjectivity as a necessary condition to authentic communication between Christians and Muslims by analysing the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism from the philosophies of dialogue. Using in places the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study analyses the empirical data of  <i>A Common Word</i> and reavels the underlying problems of ideologies, dichotomies, identity constructions and orthodoxy claims that are associated with the paradigms of Trinitarianism and Tawhidism.  This study observes that groups of Christians and Muslims, through various conferences and workshops were able to reach some compromise on interfaith matters.

This thesis attempts to provide a new reading of the organic motif as found in the works of the Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921). Noting the recent collapse of the previously dominant 'two Bavincks‘ hypothesis, one explores the impact of this now defunct hermeneutic on the normative reading of Bavinck‘s organic motif in the work of Jan Veenhof. In probing Veenhof‘s general reliance on the failed 'two Bavincks‘ model and view of the motif through this lens, it becomes evident that a new general reading of Bavinck (which will be used to interpret specific portions of his theology) is required. One must 'reunite‘ the 'two Bavincks‘ by tracing the basis for conceptual unity in his thought. This basis for unity is located in Bavinck‘s doctrine of God. In handling the divine paradigm of unity-in-diversity via both triadic and non-triadic emphases, one argues that Bavinck attempts to understand all of nature and history as a broad sweep of Trinitarian divine self-revelation. The redemption and modification of the Augustinian notion of the vestigia trinitatis enables Bavinck to see the Trinity revealed in all of life. He thus commandeers the common organic language of nineteenth century Europe and, in so doing, loads it with Trinitarian meaning. The working hypothesis developed is that for Bavinck, a theology of Trinity ad intra leads to a cosmology of organism ad extra. Such a hypothesis is probed in chapters on Bavinck‘s doctrines of God, general revelation, Scripture and ecclesiology. In all of these, one finds that Bavinck invokes the organic motif to explain the sense in which the archetypal unity of the Godhead acts as the foundation for all consequent ectypal unity in the creation. As such, the organisch is understood to be Bavinck‘s motif of choice when accounting for the triniformity which abounds in all created reality. In this exploration, it becomes apparent that as Bavinck uses the organic motif, he draws on the heritage of both Patristic and Reformation theology. However, he does not merely repristinate this tradition. Rather, his use of the motif is a highly creative development in the intellectual context of the late nineteenth century.

The aim of this work is to explore how I can use three different playing techniques on the clarinet in my interpretation of the Trinity, a graphic scored piece composed by Kristin Boussard.In this project, I have interpreted Trinity, a graphic scored piece for solo clarinet composed by Kristin Boussard. The piece consists of three movements, and for each movement, I have used a chosen playing technique. The three different playing techniques I have used are: traditional sounding tones, alternate playing techniques that do not generate traditional sounding tones and finally traditional sounding tones combined with three electronic pedal effects, distortion, delay and chorus effects. I have made profound analysis of the graphic score based on a variety of musical aspects. Afterwards I have made a practical interpretation of the piece which has generated additional analyzes and reflections on the relationship between the graphical notation and the sounding result.My result shows the different ways that I, as a clarinetist, can work with a crafted graphic piece. I show the different approaches in my analysis and what the graphic score tells me without having any, in advance, given guidelines.The artistic part of this project consists of a recording of the Trinity, made February 29th 2016 in the auditorium of the School of Music in Piteå. / Validerat; 20160626 (global_studentproject_submitter)

Thesis advisor: Boyd T. Coolman / William of Saint-Thierry, Isaac of Stella, and Baldwin of Forde created a distinctly Cistercian body of Eucharistic theology in the twelfth century. But despite one article that examines none of the Eucharistic treatises and omits Isaac and Baldwin, there is no scholarly account of Cistercian Eucharistic theology. Nor is there more generally a historical work that examines the connection between medieval Trinitarian and Eucharistic theology. This dissertation seeks to fill both lacunae. The introduction of the dissertation sets the historical and scholarly context for investigation. Chapter 1 examines the thought of William of Saint-Thierry, who has the most developed understanding of Eucharistic presence, conversion, and reception. It also treats the connections William draws between Eucharistic reception and meditation on scripture and the passion of Christ. Chapter 2 treats Isaac of Stella, who uses more intellectualist imagery and imagery of the mystical body of Christ. Chapter 3 studies Baldwin of Forde, who argues that the term transubstantiation best describe Eucharistic conversion. Baldwin emphasizes reception by faith in the truth about Christ. Chapter 5 offers a brief conclusion. These Cistercian authors thought that the character of God as a Trinity of persons united in essence provides the form or structure of the economy of salvation—especially its turning point or climax, the Eucharist. This emphasis on Trintiarian dimensions is the hallmark of Cistercian Eucharistic theology. They saw the Eucharist as an analogue to the Incarnation, a site where the economic missions of the Trinity take place. In the Eucharist, God the Father draws those who receive to himself by uniting them to the body and blood of the Son. This unity brings an increase of unity with the Holy Spirit. Once united to the Son and Spirit, the faithful are united to the Father and to the unity that all three persons share. The Eucharist is, then, not only a site of God’s movement toward human beings, but of human movement back toward God. It acts as a kind of pivot point in the economy of salvation: the moment where the outpouring of the Son and Spirit join most deeply with the faithful and draw them back to the Father. The Eucharist also binds the members of the Church, the body of Christ, to each other and to their Head in his act of self-offering to the Father. It connects the meditation, sacrifices, and offering of their own lives to that of Christ, with which they are offered to the Father.

Thesis advisor: Roberto Goizueta / This dissertation presents a study in the Christian systematic theology of Robert W. Jenson on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In doing so, this work seeks to contribute descriptively to Jenson scholarship in the theological academy, to understanding, clarifying and interpreting his role in the contemporary theological scene, while, as itself operating in the discipline of systematic theology, this work also seeks to constructively augment our understanding of the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church, reckoning with the significance of this theological locus for a number of prominent movements in the current thought and practice of world Christianity. Part I and Part II of this work engage in an exegesis of the content of Jenson’s pneumatology. Here I advance the interpretation that Jenson’s pneumatology can be meaningfully and beneficially coalesced under—without being merely reduced to—the theme of “freedom” or “liberation.” This integrating motif becomes evident as Jenson’s pneumatology is unfolded across a number of other traditional doctrinal loci and interweaved with a number of other ecumenical concerns, examining both the “work” of the Spirit in the world (first part) and the divine “person” of the Spirit (second part). Part III, then, ventures a constructive evaluation and reception of Jenson’s distinctive pneumatological proposals by way of dialectical encounter with three horizons: those of (1) early Christian pneumatology, (2) twentieth century trinitarian theology and (3) liberation theological discourse and praxis. Through this dialectical engagement, I interrogate a number of aspects of Jenson’s divine ontology and theological infrastructure, insofar as they relate to the uniqueness of his pneumatological proposals. With a re-calibration of some of those theological judgments, I argue that certain insights of Jenson’s notion of the Spirit as eternal, personal Freedom in God, as the Unsurpassed One and as the movement of divine self-constitution from the End of Divine Life merit retrieval. This characterization of the person of the Spirit as one of “freedom” or “liberation,” for the believer, for creation, and for God, forges a pneumatological reconstruction of divine transcendence, similarly to what classical theology had done for the persons of the Father and the Son. Such an achievement, I suggest, offers one viable interpretation of the unique role of the Spirit that mediates between traditional-classical trinitarian ontology and the lived experience of the Spirit currently being exhibited, perceived and theorized in various aspects of global theology and leading areas of theological research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Scholarship devoted to Old Columbia Seminary and its individual theologians has covered a variety of topics, but has not focused on the efforts of the Old Columbia divines to counteract Unitarianism and stand for historic Trinitarianism in the nineteenth-century American South. This dissertation asserts that understanding the debate between the Old Columbia Trinitarians over against the Unitarians is crucial for any adequate interpretation of nineteenth-century Southern religious history and that within that debate the Old Columbians successfully turned the tide against Unitarian advances. These conclusions are reached by examining the three main “theatres” of the conflict between Unitarianism and Trinitarianism in the nineteenth-century American South: the theatre of Columbia, South Carolina, where Columbia theologian James Henley Thornwell (1812–1862) laboured to reverse the Unitarian advancements made there by Thomas Cooper (1759–1839), the president of South Carolina College; the theatre of Charleston, South Carolina, where Columbia pastor-scholar Thomas Smyth (1808–1873) sought to repel the Unitarian movement led by Samuel Gilman (1791–1858), the minister of the Unitarian Church of Charleston; and the theatre of New Orleans, Louisiana, where Columbia divine Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818–1902) attempted to counteract the Unitarianism popularized there by Theodore Clapp (1792–1866), the pastor of the Unitarian Church of New Orleans. The contemporary relevance of the Old Columbians' efforts is also demonstrated.

The ground water quality of the Trinity Aquifer for wells sampled between 2000 and 2009 was examined using multivariate and spatial statistical techniques. A Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that all of the water quality parameters with the exception of nitrate vary with land use. A Spearman’s rho analysis illustrates that every water quality parameter with the exception of silica correlated with well depth. Factor analysis identified four factors contributable to hydrochemical processes, electrical conductivity, alkalinity, and the dissolution of parent rock material into the ground water. The cluster analysis generated seven clusters. A chi-squared analysis shows that Clusters 1, 2, 5, and 6 are reflective of the distribution of the entire dataset when looking specifically at land use categories. The nearest neighbor analysis revealed clustered, dispersed, and random patterns depending upon the entity being examined. The spatial autocorrelation technique used on the water quality parameters for the entire dataset identified that all of the parameters are random with the exception of pH which was found to be spatially clustered. The combination of the multivariate and spatial techniques together identified influences on the Trinity Aquifer including hydrochemical processes, agricultural activities, recharge, and land use. In addition, the techniques aided in identifying areas warranting future monitoring which are located in the western and southwestern parts of the aquifer.