The Bhagavad Gītā, a classical Sanskrit text, describes a spiritual practice called karma yoga. Central to this practice is niṣkāma karman or action without desire. A number of philosophical issues present themselves in connection with this teaching. First, while the Gītā enjoins action, action seems prima facie problematic in the Gītā in light of metaphysical claims that seem to deny human freedom. Second, Western scholars who hold that desire is necessary for action find the Gītā's desirelessness requirement problematic. Finally, while the sense of karma yoga seems clear enough, the teaching is connected with two notions that are obscure: transcendence of the guṇa-s and surrender of action to Krishna. This dissertation explores and seeks solutions to these problems. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the Gītā's philosophy and selected classical Indian commentaries. Chapter 2 tackles the assumption by some scholars that the Gītā shares tenets of the determinist metaphysics of classical Sāṃkhya. This assumption is shown false and the argument made that the Gītā, as a yogic text, implies voluntarism. Chapter 2 offers an analysis of the Gītā's concept of guṇa (literally 'strand'), and argues that the puruṣa, or self, which is called a 'consenter' exercises agency in consenting. Chapter 3 addresses the worry that niṣkāma karman, or desireless action, is a contradictory notion because desire is necessary for action. Based on examination of the Gītā's theory of action, it is shown that the Gītā does not hold desire necessary for action and that in fact the text articulates four distinct types of niṣkaāma karman. Chapter 4 explores the concepts of transcendence of the guṇa-s and surrender of action to Krishna and develops a definition of karma yoga involving these concepts. The chapter concludes with an argument that karma yoga requires creativity. The dissertation closes with the suggestion that through karma yoga a practitioner might come to enjoy an extraordinary sort of freedom that surpasses the ability to exercise will. / text

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John Donne was indisputably the foremost English preacher of his day. Many studies have focussed on his instructional methods; fewer have concentrated on how he tries to move his hearers. Donne especially liked preaching on the psalms. Since Christian antiquity, the seven psalms known as the penitential psalms have enjoyed a privileged place in church worship. They are central to the sacrament of penance. By Donne's time, changes in the Church of England's sacramental theology had all but eliminated the practice of penance. Nevertheless, Donne considers penance or, as it had become known, repentance, to be a crucial part of believers' lives. With his sermons on the penitential psalms Donne contributes to the vast body of literature surrounding the sacrament of penance, but his contribution is unique. He thinks that since the second person of the Trinity is identified with the Word of God, the institution of preaching God's Word is incarnational. In the sacraments, the priest ushers in the Body of Christ; in the sermon, Donne believes, the preacher's role is similar. For Donne, sermonizing is sacramental in effect. In his sermons he attempts to bring the real presence of God to his listeners. Moreover, his sermons display a "sacramental mimesis": they enact their subject matter by their very words and try to effect change in the listeners as the words are uttered. Further, Donne thinks that since God established all the ordinances of the church, none of them should be ignored. Therefore, Donne's twenty-one sermons on the penitential psalms reveal a preacher who is on the one hand a conservative churchman and on the other a startlingly innovative preacher.

This thesis investigates early sixteenth-century motet settings of texts taken from the Song of Songs. By way of contextualization, I will explore the Christian history of Song of Songs exegesis from the third century to the twelfth. I will also consider generic properties of the renaissance motet---contemporary definitions of the genre, performance context, types of texts used, and repertory dissemination---and make a case that both the Song of Songs and the motet occupy a sort of "intermediate" position between the secular and the sacred world, participating in both the earthly and the spiritual. / Several motets---Tota pulchra es by Ludwig Senfl, Tota pulchra es by Nicolaus Craen, Nigra sum sed formosa by Johannis Lheritier, and the anonymous Vulnerasti cor meum from Petrucci's Motetti de la Corona I print---will be analyzed through the lens of the historical Christian exegesis and generic considerations of the motet. I interpret diverse musical parameters---among them, texture, quotation of pre-existent material, motivic structuring, cadential manipulation, mode and modal commixture---as some of the ways in which the composers responded to their Song of Songs texts.

Through a contextual reading of the exodus narrative, this study explores various struggles that Moses faced as he led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. During the journey the people complained, not only because of the hardship in the wilderness, but, at a time, they rebelled against Moses' leadership and challenged the institutions he put in place. Moses responded to these rebellions, either by earnest intercession in favor of the community or by letting God's wrath suppress violently the contention. The narrative raises a number of issues related to the exercise of leadership, especially leadership contest that many leaders today still wrestle with. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

In this study I present the results of interviews conducted with thirty-four students in the School of Theology, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. In the following eight chapters I have provided a description of the discourses and discourse communities in the School of Theology which have emerged from my analysis of the data collected from these interviews. These discourses fall into three categories: The primary discourse, which is the result of the students' socialisation within their family and the primary community structures of their childhood, the secondary discourse ensuing from their educational and denominational backgrounds and their relationships with their teachers and the hierarchy of their denominations and the tertiary discourse of critical biblical exegesis which they encounter in their studies in the School of Theology. The product of this encounter is a clash of discourses which challenges the students both academically, leading to poor academic performance on the part of many students, and spiritually, leading to such dire consequences as nervous breakdowns or the loss of faith and vocation. In describing this clash of discourses I include a plea for the management and staff of the School of Theology to provide both academic and spiritual support for the students' in their attempt to face and overcome the considerable challenges of studying in the School of Theology. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg,2001.

This thesis has been written at a time when sub-Saharan African people are facing great religious and socio--political challenges in their history. These challenges have been such since 1960. Many questions regarding identity, religion and socio-political situations have been raised. This includes questions relating to God and the oppressive religious and socio-political leadership class and the oppressed people of sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed this thesis tries to face the question of God's pathos, making connections or looking for resemblance between Hosea's time and the religious and socio-political situations of sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore the main purpose is not to go back to the large already explored debate about the question of God's pathos over centuries, but to see how God's, Hosea's and sub-Saharan African people's pathos interact each with other, and how such an interaction could be used for the religious and socio-political transformations of the sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of methodology, we introduce a new paradigm called tautegory in place of the typical allegorical, holistic, literal, typological, inculturation or liberation approaches used by most of African scholars. This new paradigm warrants the creation of a new theological framework. We think this new framework could correspond to sub-Saharan culture. This new paradigm could also be used to throw new light on how to resolve some theological contradictions that classic theism has brought through the missionaries' work in the sub-Saharan African context. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002. / funding from the African Theological Initiative, Prof Kwame Bediako, Dr. Anthony Balcomb and Dr. Andreia Solomon.

This thesis consists of a detailed exegetical and contextual study of passages that contain the term "to know YHWH" in the book of Jeremiah. The goal of the thesis was to define the meaning of the term "to know YHWH" as Jeremiah understood it and to find out its relevance for the Church in DR Congo. The study demonstrates that the life of Judah as a nation was conditioned by the knowledge of YHWH. According to Jeremiah, to know YHWH is to recognize covenantal traditions as normative and to accept to follow them for a harmonious relationship with YHWH and with one another in the society. These covenantal traditions were rooted in YHWH's mighty acts of liberation of Israel in history, in YHWH's prerogative as the sole God of Israel, and in the necessity for Israel to establish a just society as witness of YHWH's justice, righteousness and steadfast love. Jeremiah demonstrates that it is the abandonment of this knowledge that caused the disintegration of Judah as a nation. This abandonment of the knowledge of YHWH is manifested in two areas. The first is the area of social justice (4:19-22; 5:1-6; 9:1-8; 9:22-23; 22:13-19). Several passages in Jeremiah link the lack of the knowledge of YHWH with the perversion of justice in terms of not encouraging the oppressed, not defending the cause of the fatherless, not pleading the cause of the widow, and not maintaining justice in the court. This lack of social justice is also manifested in terms of falsehood, adultery, abuse of human speech and the abuse of power by those who possess it. The second is the area of idolatry (2:4-13). The prophet Jeremiah accuses the people of Judah (Israel) of not having called upon YHWH during their time of need. Instead, they chose to go after foreign nations and their idols. In this way, they broke the covenant with YHWH and brought judgment upon the nation. For Jeremiah, the blame of the failure to know YHWH is to be placed upon the entire nation, but particularly upon two groups of people: religious and political leaders. These two groups worked for their own interest and failed to maintain a society according to the requirements set in the covenant. YHWH responded to this failure in two different ways (24:4-7; 31:31-34): he punished his people by sending them into exile, and promised to restore them. This restoration will consist of bringing Israelites back to their land, of making a new covenant with them, and of giving them a new heart that will enable them to fully know him. I used my Congolese context to understand the meaning of some passages in Jeremiah where I could not agree (or where I was not sure) with other scholars' interpretation. At the same time, the book of Jeremiah helped me to realize that it is because our Congolese Christianity (or our knowledge of YHWH) is still superficial that it has not yet been able to help us build a coherent and unified nation. This is why the DR Congo has collapsed in spite of its claim to have the largest Roman Catholic community in the continent, the world's most influential francophone Protestant movement and the continent's biggest independent Churches. This researcher argues that the crisis in DR Congo may find a solution if the Church reorganizes her ministries and views her mission as the implementation of Jesus' mission for the world: the announcement 1f the coming of the Kingdom of God with its vision of the new heaven and new earth. This vision of new earth and new heaven would lead the Church to a new understanding of our salvation in Christ as a constant restoration of our relationship with God, with one another and 'a new understandiJOl9 of our life and ministry as responsible citizens, striving to reconcile every aspect of our life as individuals and community with Christ. In this way, the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of each Christian would not be understood only in terms of leading us to heaven but also as the power that enables us to transform our society now and here. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2000.

This study is an attempt to read the Prologue of the Gospel of John using the type of Rhetorical Analysis based on Semitic logic. This Semitic approach shows the chiastic construction of the Prologue demonstrating its centre to be anthropocentric rather than theocentric. Furthermore this Semitic logic makes it possible to identify the central term (pisteu,ousin) in the Prologue and also demonstrates the strategic placing of that term. Modern and post-modern literary approaches are employed to discover what the implied reader knows about the Prologue. The rationale in all this is that the more one engages with the implied reader, the more one gets to know about the text. The construction of the implied reader takes into account the worldview prominent in the first century CE biblical world. The aspects which deal with a retrospective reading of the text make it possible to enter into the Jewish biblical and socio-cultural matrix which has generated themes touched on by the Prologue. The aspects dealing with the prospective reading of the text demonstrate how the Prologue prepares the real reader to engage with the remainder of the Gospel of John. The research in Intertextuality has made it abundantly clear that in reading the Prologue the real reader actually engages with a multiplicity of texts and circumstances to such an extent that s/he is not merely reading Jn 1:1-18 but a vast network of information and codes known to the implied reader. The interpretations produced by such an engagement are both creative and original. For example, the association of the centre piece of the Prologue with the promise God made to Abraham is no mere inferential leap – it derives from literal and thematic intertextual engagements with the two testaments which comprise the Christian Bible. Some epistemological problems have surfaced with respect to the interactionism and relational dynamics associated with the reading process and these are pointed out in the thesis. It must be noted that far from hampering the work, these epistemological issues have actually pointed out new directions for further research. In this regard the General Conclusion to the thesis is relevant. Key terms: Johannine Prologue; the Gospel of John; Exegesis/Exegetical Method; Rhetorical Analysis; Semitic thinking; Intertextuality; Reader Response Criticism; Implied reader; Real reader; Jesus Christ; Moses; Jewish culture; John the Baptist; Qumran community; o` lo,goj; Incarnation; Wisdom traditions; Exodus; Glory of God. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.