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This dissertation is a statement concerning Calvin's view of God and Calvin's view of grace, as they appear in the sermons. Contrary to the opinion of Barth and others, to the effect that for Calvin Christ is the mere executor of the Father's inscrutable and symmetrical decrees, we assert that the requirements of the pastoral situation led Calvin to give much more place to election than to reprobation. Predestination for Calvin was essentially election, because the God we know in Jesus Christ is precisely the electing God through whose free grace undeserving sinners are granted faith and perseverance leading to salvation. The nature of God as sovereign mercy, known through Christ, is the focus of Calvin's doctrine of grace. For Calvin the preacher, reprobation's functional status is less one of a fixed decree than of a dark possibility for those who do not respond in faith to the preaching of the Gospel.

Chapter Five finally argues that Bouyer's construal of the Church's principal actions (liturgical celebration, evangelical witness, and the total life of prayer and Christian discipleship) is consistent with his christological and trinitarian horizon, and that these ecclesial actions respond most appropriately to the divine initiative manifested in the Word and Wisdom.

The subject of this dissertation is Richard Hooker's defence of the royal headship of the church in the final book of his treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie. His treatment of this political question is remarkable for its depth of theological analysis. Hooker approaches the issue of the royal headship from three main theological angles: first, from the standpoint of the crucial distinction of Reformation soteriology between the so-called 'Two Realms' or 'Two Kingdoms'; secondly, according to the categories and distinctions of basic systematic doctrine, notably Chalcedonian Christology and Trinitarian dogma; and thirdly, he applies the magisterial reformers' test of ecclesiological orthodoxy. Modern students of Hooker's political thought have been very reluctant to bridge the gulf between the theological and political realms of his discourse. As a result, the theological matrix of Hooker's doctrine of the Royal Supremacy has been quite neglected. The erection of such a bridge is indispensable to our understanding of the alien mentalite which underlies this important Elizabethan controversy. We shall attempt to demonstrate that Hooker's employment of theological argument in defence of the Royal Supremacy was central to his ultimate apologetic purpose. He wrote the Lawes with a view to 'resolving the consciences' of the Disciplinarian-Puritan critics of the Elizabethan Settlement. He sought to convince these opponents by the most compelling mode of argument they knew - theological argument - that the royal headship was wholly consistent with the cardinal principles of the ecclesiology and political theory of the magisterial Reformation. In the first chapter there is a consideration of the methodological difficulties of modern Hooker scholarship. This is followed by an examination of Hooker's apologetic intention and a division of the chief theological elements of the controversy over the Royal Supremacy. Chapter two explores the soteriological foundations of Hooker's doctrine of the Two Realms and Two Regiments as well as his relation to the authority of the magisterial reformation. Chapter three examines Hooker's ecclesiology as the pivotal link between his soteriological 'first principles' and his political theory. Finally, in chapter four, the considerations of the previous chapters will be applied directly to the interpretation of Hooker's theology of the royal headship as presented by him in Book VIII of the Lawes.

This thesis examines the proposition that there is a correspondence between the concept of human self-transcendence and the concept of the deification of man in that both are concerned with the bringing of human nature to its fulfilment by a process of 'redemption'. The first issue addressed is what it means to speak of man participating in divinity, and this notion is then traced through the religion and philosophy of the ancient classical world and the later Graeco-Roman world as the background against which early Christian doctrine emerged. Some modern interpretations of the notion of transcendence as it relates to the human existent are then reviewed, with particular attention being given to the suggestion that it is legitimate to speak of man rather than God as the 'locus' of transcendence by virtue of the inherent openness of human nature to the transcendence of being that meets it in its ex-sisting in being. The second, third and fourth chapters examine the development of the concept of deification as a way of speaking of humanity being brought to a resemblance to God, partaking of the divine nature, and thereby being enabled to realize the image of God in which man was originally created. The fifth chapter investigates the contributions of a selection of contemporary thinkers on the notion of man's quest for fulfilment by the process of self-transcendence, that process of overcoming the aspects of being human which compromise and threaten actual human existence. The final chapter shows how the insights of contemporary thought on the concept of self-transcendence can illuminate for us the patristic concept of deification as a way of speaking about the nature and destiny of human existence and the thesis concludes with a suggestion of three areas of contemporary investigation to which this study might be related.

Rules of engagement, ethics of war, and codes of chivalry are all phrases which remind one of human attempts to rein in and regulate what is perhaps the most anarchic and illogical of all human activities: organized war. The role of the great religions of the world both in propagating war through crusades and jihads as well as their attempts at transcending its savagery through images of miles Christianus or the pious ghazi has also been much discussed. The aim of this thesis is to study the ethics of war in the context of Islamic societies in the Early Middle Ages from several complementary perspectives. Our sources for the period vary greatly from decade to decade and from region to region. This has often led historians of ideas and mentalities to concentrate on one aspect to the exclusion of others. This is particularly so in the case of ethics of war where most of the argument seems to concentrate on a few passages from the Qur'an, supplemented by some quotations from manuals of ḥadith and commentaries on them in the legal textbooks of the different religious schools. That all these are crucial for an understanding of Muslim attitudes and reactions to war throughout centuries is beyond dispute. But it remains, nevertheless, a lop-sided view: neglecting large areas of debate and speculation in literature, philosophy, and mystical meditations, presented as fully-fledged arguments or as occasional remarks and observations embedded in the extant texts from the period. By evaluating these scattered sources and listening to the different voices heard through them, I hope to show some of the different attitudes and responses to the ethics of war and avoid the monolithic and doggedly timeless approach which, at its worst and most extreme, envisages a non-existing consensus among the Muslims from the rise of Islam to the beginning of this new century and neglects the evidence of regional traditions and innovative thinkers by relying solely on a handful of quotes.

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