This thesis studies al-Ghazali's theory of knowledge, particularly his concept of knowledge of God in his three later works: "The book of Knowledge" of the Ih&dotbelow;ya', al-Munqidh, and Iljam al-`Awamm. From his conception of knowledge of God the first book of the Ih&dotbelow;ya ', to his criticism of various approaches to attaining the knowledge of God in the Munqidh, to his assertion of the best method for attaining the knowledge of God in the Iljam, the aim of the current study is to find out which faculty of man's perception, according to al-Ghazali, is the most appropriate for accessing Divinity. Since al-Ghazali's three works studied here---were composed in different periods, and since the Iljam was completed only a few days before his death, the objective of this study is then to see if there is any change, or development, in al-Ghazali's position regarding the issue of knowledge of God during the later period of his life.

Aim. To describe and compare parishioners’ and minister’s 1) existential, spiritual and religious experiences, 2) expectations and conceptions regard-ing the Church and the ecclesial activities and 3) in theological terms reflect over these experiences and conceptions. Method. A random, stratified, sample was constructed relating to parishion-ers and ministers in 24 parishes in the Stockholm bishopric, concerning men and women in the ages 25-65. The educational level of parishioners, was comparable to the average of Stockholm residents. Results. Both parishioners and ministers described several existential and spiritual/religious experiences. It was not clear if there were any differences between the two groups concerning spiritual/religious experiences. Yet, their experiences were interpreted in different ways, inasmuch that ministers more often interpreted their experiences in confessional terms. Parishioners thought that religion could be expressed in many different ways. They considered the divine services to be too rigid and distant and wished that ministers should be on their own level and not set themselves above ordinary people. The ministers could be placed on an continuum from sender orientation to receiver orientation due to their expectations and con-ceptions regarding the Church and the ecclesial activities. Sender orientation means to primarily start with the Church statement of faith. Receiver orienta-tion means, to primarily start with the parishioners from their own world-view where religion can be expressed in many different ways. The ministers presented in total 48% sender orientation descriptions and 52% receiver ori-entation. Comparable figures for the parishioners were 5% sender orientation and 95% receiver orientation. Conclusions. There seems to be a tension between, on one hand the view of a Church with an aim to meet the existential and spiritual needs of the pa-rishioners, and on the other hand a Church with a primary mission to com-municate the Christian articles of faith. If half of the ministers have a direc-tion in which parishioners have no interest and do not ask for, this might be a problem for the Church.

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Like many mainline Protestant denominations, the Disciples of Christ in Indiana experienced discord and schism during the 1920s as a result of the modernistfundamentalist controversies. Although many historians accentuate the role of doctrinal disputes, recent scholarship suggests the importance of social and cultural factors. This study shows that the strife between modernist and fundamentalist Disciples in Indiana encapsulates a larger cultural rift in American society that had been growing since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Using the rhetoric of "cooperation," modernist Disciple leaders of the statewide Disciples of Christ organization tried to implement a more centralized church structure that would enable them to pursue a progressive agenda. Fundamentalist Disciple ministers and laypersons regarded such efforts as an infringement on their local autonomy, and their widespread involvement in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan was symptomatic of their anxiety over modernizing forces within their churches and throughout American culture. / Department of History

Note: / Because of the centrality of Christ, truly God and truly human, Christiantheology regards the understanding of the human as one of its essentialtasks. In the wake of environmental concerns, however. the dominantself-understanding of the human is presently being chaUenged andrethought by Christians. This study is an attempt to contribute to thislarger effort of examining the role of the human in Christiantheological responses to the ecological "crisis." a question that issurfacing as a paramount concern in this emergent literature.[...] / Due a la centralite du Christ, vrai dieu et vrai homme, la theologieChretienne considere que l'aspect humain est un element essentiel aetudier. Au milieu des preoccupations environnementales, cependant, lacomprehension dominante de la personne humaine est mise en cause eten train d'etre revisee par les auteurs chn!tiens. Cette etude tachedecontribuer a l'effort plus vaste d'examiner le role de l'etre humainpanni des reponses theologiques chretiennes en face de la criseecologique, cette question se pose comme une preoccupation capitaledans la litterature emergente.[...]

This study examines the nature of, the relationship between salvation, knowledge and faith in the specific context of Christian theology. It seeks to establish an epistemological basis for the Christian message of salvation in a culture which since the time of the Enlightenment has been highly sceptical of religious claims. This study begins with a critique of the theology of Emil Brunner. It accepts two of his theological premises; that human reason and philosophy cannot prove the truth of salvation, and that the salvation of which Christianity speaks does not address humanity like a bolt from the blue as some groundless revelation but on the basis of a point of contact between man and God, which allows humanity to recognise the salvific event. The distinction Brunner draws between 'personal' knowledge as an encounter between subjects, and 'objective' knowledge which is the construct of human reason enables him to speak of revelation in an unusual and original way. According to this thesis Christian revelation is at the same time rationally and 'personally' comprehensible, and yet not capable of being deduced or verified by human reason. However closer investigation reveals that Brunner's exposition of the incarnation as the 'personal' self-revelation of God within history is not coherent in itself. His understanding of both the 'personal' and the 'historical' is not so much derived from a natural understanding of personality and history, but rather from a use of those terms as defined by, an understanding of revelation which contains implicit within it the groundlessness and the 'alien' nature of revelation which, he sought to avoid. It is the contention of this thesis that in spite of Brunner's failure it is possible to use his basic categories of the 'historical' and the 'personal' to speak of salvation as the, confirmation within history of human 'personal' worth. This worth is ultimately indescribable and inexplicable in the categories of a contingent and finite world, and, as such, is open to a transcendent confirmation and validation. The Christian tradition, itself rooted in the tradition of Judaism, bears witness, like Judaism, to the experience of such a 'personal' validation and vindication. In this sense, therefore, the resurrection of Jesus, while offering no historical 'proof of the truth' on account of its essentially 'personal' nature, can be seen as a legitimate epistemological basis for an understanding of salvation, which still preserves the primacy of faith. However the focus upon the category of salvation, and salvation as an epistemological touchstone, reveals that the resurrection of Jesus confirms not so much the traditional distinctive Christological ontology, but rather a more all-embracing ontology of the gracious transcendence of love itself which resists the narrow and distinctive definitions of orthodoxy. In fact an epistemologically valid ontology of faith's activity in love allows the traditional ontologies of Christology, Soteriology and the Trinity to be seen as peripheral to a contemporary articulation of the Christian message of salvation on account of their dubious epistemological foundations.

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This study presents a comparative analysis of the interpretative approaches and the religious Weltanschauungs of two Islamic revivalists of Pakistan, especially in relation to jihad and the establishment of Islamic global order. Abu al-A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979) argues that the correct understanding of certain key Qur'anic terms makes it incumbent upon every Muslim to strive for the achievement of the basic objective of Islam, which is to establish an Islamic global order ( izhar-i din) to implement the Divine laws ( iqamat-i din) so that all un-Islamic (and, therefore, oppressive) "systems" of the world be replaced by the "ideal Islamic rule" (khilafat) of "the Islamic State." To strive fully to achieve this end is jihad, which may assume the form of an armed struggle (qital) when the situation so demands and Islamic conditions for it are fulfilled. Mawdudi gives various arguments to assert that this jihad is not a bane but a boon for mankind, and in it lies the only hope for mankind's prosperous existence in this world and the next. Contradicting Mawdudi's worldview, Javed Aḥmad Ghamidi (1951- ) asserts that the basic purpose of Islam as a religion is to purify the human soul to enable a person to worship and serve God as His true subject and servant. The qital done by the Prophet and his companions was essentially and for most part a form of Divine punishment against Divinely specified peoples for denying the truth of the Prophet's message and position after this truth had become evident to them. This form of jihad ended with the Prophet and his companions, and the only valid moral basis for qital now is to end oppression and injustice. Jihad (as qital) cannot be waged to propagate religion or merely to eradicate a non-Islamic "system." This study looks at the implications of these ideas and also delves into the concepts and interpretative approaches on which they are founded.

This paper explores the practical teachings found in the Dunhuang manuscript of the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch and considers the possibility of practice within a doctrine of sudden enlightenment. Part One outlines how the doctrine of sudden enlightenment can be understood to undermine the purpose for practicing meditation. Part Two first makes a case for the position that practice is presupposed by the text regardless of the doctrine of sudden enlightenment. Next the paper argues for what type of meditation practice the Platform Sutra teaches is consistent with sudden enlightenment. The practice the Platform Sutra teaches is an intentionless, continuous, non-passive non-attachment while in the midst of dharmas that takes as its basis the suchness of things inherent in sentient beings.

The Christian tradition, both East and West, has developed various models and theories of the atonement as explanations of what it means to speak of the reconciling activity of God in Christ. Central to these has been the claim that God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ. One way of testifying to the reconciling love of God has been the adoption of the metaphor theosis (�divinization�, �deification�) as an explanation of salvation. While central to Eastern Orthodoxy, a doctrine of theosis also has a rich tradition within Western, especially Reformed theology. The Reformed theologian, Thomas Forsyth Torrance, represents an attempt to construct a soteriology that incorporates both Eastern and Western models of the atonement around the controlling metaphor of theosis. A close reading of his theology presents a robust and clearly articulated doctrine of theosis as a key way of expressing God�s reconciling activity in Christ. As the true Man and the last Adam, Christ represents the arche and telos of human existence, the one in whose image all humanity has been created and into whose likeness all humanity is destined to be transformed from glory to glory. Through the Incarnation the Son becomes human without ceasing to be divine, to unite humanity and divinity together and effect a �deification� of human nature, mediated to men and women who are said to be �in Christ� by the work of the Holy Spirit. By means of a �wonderful exchange� Christ takes what is ours and gives us what is his. For Torrance, this is the heart of atonement. The goal of humanity is worship, something Torrance defines as the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son�s communion with the Father. The locus of worship, and thus of theosis, is the church, the communion of saints created by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Throughout Torrance�s doctrines of creation, anthropology, incarnation, reconciliation, and pneumato-ecclesiology, the concept of theosis plays a central and constitutive role in explaining a Christian theology of salvation. Theosis is thus foundational to Torrance�s theology and is one way in which he holds together in systematic fashion his diverse theological oeuvre.