Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The subject of this manuscript is the Texas Rangers “clean-up” of San Augustine, which was undertaken between late January 1935 until approximately July 1936 at the direction of then newly-elected Governor James V. Allred, in response to the local “troubles” that arose from an near decade long “crime wave.” Allred had been elected on a platform advocating dramatic reform of state law enforcement, and the success of the “clean-up” was heralded as validation of those reforms, which included the creation of – and the Rangers’ integration into – the Texas Department of Public Safety that same year. Despite such historic significance for the community of San Augustine, the state, and the Texas Rangers, no detailed account has ever been published. The few existing published accounts are terse, vague, and inadequate to address the relevant issues. They are often also overly reliant on limited oral accounts and substantially factually flawed, thereby rendering their interpretive analysis moot in regard to certain issues. Additionally, it is a period of San Augustine’s history that haunts that community to this day, particularly as a result of the wide-ranging myths that have taken hold in the absence of a thoroughly researched and documented published account. Concerns over offending the descendants of the key antagonists, many of whom still live in the area, has long made local historians wary of taking on the topic. Nevertheless, many of them have privately expressed the need for just such a treatment, as they have crossed paths with enough evidence in pursuit of other topics that they recognize and appreciate the historical significance, and lack of an accurate modern understanding, of those events. Furthermore, descendants of some of the victims have expressed frustration over the lack of such an account, because it makes them feel victimized once more to see the mistreatment and suffering of their relatives, which shaped many lives within their families for generations, continue to be ignored in the local historical record. Those events did not occur in a vacuum, and their effects linger still.

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In On Christian Teaching, Saint Augustine writes, “Just and holy living depends on being a good judge of things.” This brief sentence lucidly articulates the importance that judgment plays in Augustine’s thought. This thesis is the first full-length study of how he understands the distinct role of the Holy Spirit in judgment. I argue that judgment denotes both the discernment of a thing’s nature and evaluation of it; and we become good judges only as we are re-ordered by the love which is, in Augustine’s favourite pneumatological verse, “poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5). I analyse this transformative work of the Spirit according to two broad categories: first, the Spirit re-orders our relation to creation principally by uniting us to the Word, the second person of the Trinity, in whom all things are created, and so we are able to discern a thing’s nature and evaluate it according to God’s purposes in creation; and, second, the Spirit re-orders our relation to time, as we patiently endure this troublous life as pilgrims hoping for eternal Sabbath rest; within this eschatological horizon situated in the age between Christ’s first coming and his return, we restrain ourselves from making both unfounded and unnecessary judgments as we defer to God’s final judgement. This thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, on the “theory” of judgment, I explicate the consistent relation throughout Augustine’s corpus between pneumatology, judgment and ethics (chapter one). I then proceed to trace out his account of how the gift of the Spirit’s love perfects our judgment by re-ordering our relation to creation, and, conversely, how lust distorts it. A right relation to creation turns on taking up our middle place: below God, next to our neighbours, and above nature (chapter two). In the second part, on the “practice” of judgment, I focus first on other-judgment, especially the role of mercy (chapter three), and then in the fourth and final chapter I turn to self-judgment, including a lengthy consideration of the nature and role of conscience (chapter four). For Augustine, then, it is only by the Spirit’s love that we are made good judges, and, simultaneously, it is only when we are good judges that our love conforms to the truth both of God’s good creation and of our in-between age.

Thesis advisor: Lisa Sowle Cahill / Contrary to current transhumanist, medical, and cultural perspectives that aging is something solely to lament or even eradicate, this work explores the meaning of aging and death from the perspective of Christian theology, particularly within the schema of St. Augustine and Karl Barth. Both authors describe the complexity of aging in terms of our curse and calling as creatures aimed at participation in God through union with Christ. Locating Christology as central to our understanding of aging illuminates the ways in which the God revealed in Christ enters our humanity, sharing in our vulnerability, dependency, frailty, and even passivity. By turning to the incarnation, Christ's nature and work not only give us future hope, but transforms the daily aging experience - both active and passive waiting within our present, temporal reality for aging individuals and their surrounding communities. By maintaining union with God through contemplation and action, Christ dignifies our status as receptive and active agents. Thus, building from these two authors, I argue that aging serves as a sign and preparation for Sabbath rest by which aging persons might enact virtue through their specific vocation before God. Likewise, those persons surrounding the aging are called to enact virtues that reciprocally respond through interdependent communities that give and receive in union with Christ. Chapter One opens with preliminary questions on the meaning of death and aging while Chapter Two delineates Augustine's view on these realities as a result of the fall and original sin. However, even in Augustine's negative view of death and aging, he highlights the good in the soul/body relation and resurrected bodies. His position legitimizes grief and the human emotions, thus offering an ethics of compassion in loss. Finally, I constructively locate the positive view of aging and death is its sign and preparation for eternal Sabbath rest. Chapter Three considers Barth's analysis of death and aging as both negative and positive, evil and good through his dialectical lens. While death is a sign of judgment, finitude constitutes human identity as good in our temporal end. His ethics mirrors his anthropology in protecting life while accepting limits. He ends by describing the three stages of life including youth, middle age, and old age as composing our vocation. Each stage includes our call before God that legitimizes agency for the old as well as interdependent relationships. Chapters Four and Five explore the Christology of Augustine and Barth. Christ's divine and human natures bring together wisdom and knowledge for Augustine in Chapter Four. Aging persons grow in wisdom and knowledge through contemplation and action in union with Christ. Not only does union with Christ become the foundation for moral agency, but Christ also achieves the benefits for aging persons through his incarnation and atoning work. Christ experiences psychological anguish and forsakenness before God as the Totus Christus. Aging persons also receive the benefits of Christ's person and work that reverses the consequences of aging and death. Chapter Five claims that participation in Christ serves as the key to understanding Barth's Church Dogmatics. God's movement to humanity and our movement to God are embodied in the hypostatic union. Here we see Christ's active agency in his divine humility/obedience through the incarnation and atoning work. Christ's passive agency or human response perfectly embodies gratitude, prayer, and obedience through union with the Spirit in fulfilling his vocation in time. Moreover, in congruence with the work of W.H. Vanstone, Jesus' passive agency that receives the activity of the world legitimizes dignity and worth for those aging stages of life involving decline and dependence. Aging persons are agents who are active and passive, giving and receiving through a mixture of contemplation (prayer) and activity in union with Christ. Finally, Chapter Six synthesizes the Christology and participation present in the theologies of Augustine and Barth as the foundation for a moral virtue theory as it applies to aging persons and their surrounding communities. By emphasizing union with Christ in Augustine's virtue theory and union with Christ in Barth's morality of `vocation,' I argue moral agents are contemplative/acting persons intended for union with God. By receiving and giving in relationship with God and others, aging persons and their communities embody virtues that reciprocally benefit one another. Virtues for the aging include humility, gratitude, generosity, wisdom, prudence, memory, friendship, fortitude, and hope. Virtues for those communities surrounding aging persons entail respect, justice, mercy, and love. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / In my dissertation I seek to contribute to the revival of interest in Augustine’s political thought by attempting to uncover his doctrine of eternal law. While absent from his mature writings, including the City of God, this doctrine is central to the investigation of justice in Augustine’s early writings. After considering Augustine’s summary of this early investigation in the Confessions, the most surprising feature of which is Augustine’s insistence on the importance of specifically political questions to his mature understanding of justice, I take up the two treatments of eternal law. In the dialogue On Free Choice, the eternal law is contrasted with the temporal law and is understood in terms of the fundamental command to “order,” which means in the first place wisdom, but also “right and honorable” action. In the anti-Manichean polemic Contra Faustum, the eternal law is presented as the will of God that commands the preservation of the natural order, which means that actions are truly just insofar as they conduce to “mortal health.” I argue that these two discussions of eternal law indicate the limitations of any kind of “higher law” doctrine. On Free Choice demonstrates the difficulty of breaking free of the guidance of temporal law and its harmonization of the demands of eternal and temporal law depends on an understanding of moral virtue whose independence is rather assumed than proven. Contra Faustum shows that the natural ends of self-preservation, procreation, and civic peace are only the beginning points of moral reasoning, since the pursuit of those ends is governed by further moral criteria that cannot easily be understood in terms of nature. In the end, then, I argue that the doctrine of eternal law, while illuminating a great deal about the problems of politics and morality as Augustine encountered them, points to the crucial importance of the question of human virtue and of acquiring the prudence that provides for this virtue in light of the necessary limitations of political life. It is probably for this reason that Augustine does not return to the doctrine in his later writings and does not rely on it in his reconciliation of the two cities in the City of God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

In this thesis I compare the works of Confucius and Mencius with those of Saint Augustine. My purpose in so doing is to show Confucian Augustinianism as a new theological perspective on Confucian- Christian ethics and Augustinianism by discovering analogies and differences in their respective understandings of the formation of moral self, particularly the acquisition of virtue, and how they believe this leads to happiness. Using the method of inter-textual reasoning, and assuming continuity between Augustine’s early and later works, I compare Confucius and Mencius’s xue (學), si (思) and li (禮) including yue (樂) with Augustine’s moral learning, contemplation, sacrament, and music respectively from chapter two to four. For Augustine the formation of the moral self is the process of finding truth in God. For Confucius and Mencius it is the process of becoming a person of virtue, which follows from growth in self-understanding in relation to the Way (道). For Confucians humans already have potential self-in-heart bestowed by Heaven whereas for Augustine the self is the metaphor of the soul in the struggle of both body and soul to be directed toward the love of God in which true happiness exists. In the concluding chapter, I propose a Confucian Augustinian synthesis as a new theological perspective on Confucian-Christian ethics and Augustinianism which offers a useful medium for the formation of the moral self by mutually making up for their respective weaknesses as revealed by this critical intertextual and cross-cultural reading. I argue that Augustinians can learn the value of public ritual practices and the public political self from classical Confucians whereas Confucians can learn from Augustine the value of spiritual experience in the moral formation of the pubic self. Confucian Augustinianism is teleological, constructive, political, public, sacramental and sin-virtue oriented theology. Confucian Augustinianism which is based on virtue ethics as common ground between Confucians and Augustine not only shows methodologies for engaging in public issues with civil society for its articulation of theology in the public sphere, but also provides profound spirituality with the engagement of Augustinian biblical and systematic theology unlike liberation theologies. In contrast to modern Augustinianism such as Augustinian realism (hope), Augustinian proceduralism (justice), Augustinian civic liberalism (love), and Radical Orthodoxy (love), Confucian Augustinianism highlights the virtue of humility and sincerity (誠) for the practice of love of God and neighbour by offering specific methods for cultivating self. Contrary to Confucian theology according to understanding of Heaven in the Confucian tradition, Confucian Augustinianism focuses on how to embody the Way of Heaven by cultivating virtue (德) rather than the theology of Heaven (天) or lists of virtues. By linking the self to family, community, nation, and transcendent God Confucian Augustinianism shows distinguishing ways for sanctification. Confucian Augustinianism is to seek true happiness by cultivating virtue and promoting inward, outward, and upward self through moral learning, contemplation, sacramental ritual, and music on the basis of biblical truth in a pluralistic global context. It can rectify the limit of Protestant individualism. Confucian Augustinianism is an own angle of Asian Christians on Augustinianism in the rapid growth of Christians in Asia contrary to previous Western Augustinianism. Confucian Augustinianism could make Asian Christians happy in truth.

The following work is an effort to better understand commonwealths by exploring the circumstances, rights, and desires of those who found them or recognize their authority. While it is apparent that mankind’s affairs are governed largely by commonwealths or similar bodies, the reasons that men have for establishing them and the rights upon which their authority is established can be more difficult to grasp. In this work, differing perspectives on the condition of men in nature, the rights they naturally possess, and the primary desires that motivate them are considered in hopes of determining a commonwealth’s purpose. Visions and definitions of commonwealths given by the same philosophers are then reviewed and compared with one another to determine the ways that their respective views on man and his condition mold the arrangements they put forth. Better understanding the relationship between men, their circumstances, and the governments they create could be of great value to those trying to determine why existing commonwealths have taken their present forms. Such insight would also clarify which attributes of a commonwealth are most essential to ensuring that it accomplishes the purposes for which it was established.

Contemporary theology is driven by a quest to make the doctrine of the Trinity “relevant” to a wide variety of concerns. Books and articles abound on the Trinity and personhood, the Trinity and ecclesiology, the Trinity and gender, the Trinity and marriage, the Trinity and societal relations, the Trinity and politics, the Trinity and ecology, etc. Recently a number of theologians have suggested that a doctrine of the Trinity may provide the key to a Christian theology of religions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate critically the claim that a proper understanding of “the Trinity” provides the basis for a new understanding of religious diversity. Drawing upon the trinitarian theology of Augustine (principally De Trinitate), I critically examine the trinitarian doctrine in Mark Heim’s trinitarian theology of multiple religious ends, Amos Yong’s pneumatological theology of religions, Jacques Dupuis’ Christian theology of religious pluralism and Raimundo Panikkar’s trinitarian account of religious experience (along with Ewert Cousins’ efforts to link Panikkar’s proposal to the vestige tradition). My Augustinian assessment is structured around three trinitarian issues in the Christian theology of religions: (1) the relationship of the “immanent” and the “economic” Trinity, (2) the relations among the divine persons (both ad intra and ad extra) and (3) the vestigia trinitatis. In conversation with Augustine, I argue (1) that there is good reason to question the claim that the “Trinity” represents the key to a new understanding of religious diversity, (2) that current “use” of trinitarian theology in the Christian theology of religions appears to be having a deleterious effect upon the doctrine, and (3) that the trinitarian problems I document in the theology of religions also encumber attempts to relate trinitarian doctrine to a variety of other contemporary issues including personhood, ecclesiology, society, politics and science. I further argue that contemporary theology is driven by a problematic understanding of what it means for a doctrine of the Trinity to be “relevant” and that Augustine challenges us to rethink the “relevancy” of trinitarian doctrine. / Dissertation