While exploring the history of liberation theology themes appearing in Black musician’s work (in Dr. Daniel Smith-Christopher’s class Bible and the Blues), it came to my attention that there are many more contemporary artists whose work also touches on these themes, such as Lauryn Hill. My thesis argues with the help of Black and Womanist scholars that the naming of one’s reality through musical lamentations is a healing act. Further, musical lamentation is an act to carry forth communities and provide them with healing because the act of acknowledging and lamenting the suffering of a marginalized community is liberating in and of itself. This act of lamenting serves, then, as an act of truth-telling, that refuses to deny the pain that is caused by systems of oppression such as racism and sexism. Lauryn Hill’s album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill then expresses a theology of lament in which the lamentation itself serves a healing purpose for those listening.

This qualitative research compared the practice of an expert preacher to core concepts in homiletic theory (the art and craft of preaching), searching for discrepancies between what theory suggested and what the preacher practiced. It also sought to validate that the preacher practiced what homiletic theorists prescribed and to inform homiletic theory by describing strategies he employed unlike those espoused in homiletic theory. To discover whether the participant's practice was congruent with theory, I first identified seminal theories. They were classified into the following modified version of Broadus's categories of ideal preaching: (a) content, (b) arrangement, (c) introduction,transition, and conclusion, (d) style, (e) illustrations, and (f) the delivery. I created a rubric from the literature review as a standard from which I compared the participant's audio and video sermons. The rubric had six categories, 39 subcategories, and 58 characteristics of ideal preaching to which the preacher was compared. The analysis included frequency counts of certain words, phrases, illustrations, and the results of the Flesch's Reading Ease score. To find strategies employed by the participant but not represented in the literature, I also used an inductive method to analyze the integral parts and patterns of the sermons. The analysis revealed that the preacher's practice was congruent with theory yet the preacher had never read homiletic theory. Because the preacher was able to sidestep the need to study homiletics, it was concluded that for him preaching was an intuitive art/craft. The research also revealed that the preacher had a personal homiletic philosophy wherein everything in his preparation, message design, and delivery centered on relevancy. The preacher felt strongly that the message had to apply to his listeners in meaningful ways. The preacher's strength centered not so much on how he presented, but what he presented. His sermons were filled with what homiletic theorist Sunukjian called "timeless truths." They made the preacher's sermons insightful, hopeful, and most of all, relevant to his listeners.

A great religious Awakening was taking place in 1805 until the end of the Civil War. Religious debates became the order of the day, and were at least equal in importance to the political debates. Alexander Campbell was one of the leading debators of the period. He was born September 12, 1787, in Ireland, but moved to America in 1809, settling in western Virginia. In 1812, Alexander and his father, Thomas Campbell, launched what they called "The Restoration Movement", in which they were seeking for the unity of all Christians on the basis of the Bible.

This thesis examines and evaluates F.C. Baur's philosophical and theological ideas as they relate to the writing of Church history and historical theology. The study is undertaken within the context of the problem of the relation between faith and history, which can be stated in more relevant categories for Church historiography as the problem of the relation between subject (faith) and object (history), and proposes that Baur's thought on this problem can be useful for the modern faith/history debate, and especially for the consideration of writing Church history.

This paper is a study of the relationship between Martin Luther's theology of the church and the practical development of the religious life of the church under his leadership, as this relationship relates to the active and passive roles of the layman in the church. The thesis question is: Did Luther hold a social prejudice against the lower classes and in favor of the upper class that caused him to modify or reinterpret his concept of the church in the course of his career?

A number of basic themes suggest themselves as focal points for a study of the thought of Jonathan Edwards. The dissertation is an attempt to argue that experience is one of them, and that an attentive eye to the doctrine of experience will reveal it as the unifying theme of his philosophy. Specifically, at the center of Edwards' aesthetic and religious vision there lies a rich and profound sense of experience, and of the relation of all things to some form of perception. The evidence is to be found in Edwards' extensive published and unpublished writings. Among the several editions of his collected works, the 1808 Worcester edition and the 1829 Dwight edition are the most complete and most reliable. Another especially valuable source is the "Miscellaneous Observations," a notebook of random thoughts Edwards kept throughout his life. Parts of this journal are published, but a great deal remains unpublished in the Yale University Library, and contains a wealth of insights into the mind of Edwards. It is important to note the doctrinal influences of covenant theology. There had always been a disposition among the Puritans to emphasize real assent in religious matters. Their gradual acceptance of experience as a guide to doctrine can be attributed to the influence of medieval Neo-Platonism as well as to their own historical situation. Three elements form the center of Edwards' doctrine of experience. They are the idea of beauty, the sense of the heart, and the theological concept of grace. An explanation of each of these components in themselves and in their interrelations reveals the full meaning of experience. A sense of beauty suffused his own personal experiences and allowed him to see the world in relation to the universal consciousness of God. Man perceives the presence of divine consciousness throughout reality with a sense of the heart. The seat of man's cognitive life is his heart, which includes the understanding as well as the will. By defining grace as a "new simple idea," Edwards proposes that it is a new principle of nature within man, and that it is a taste for moral excellency which is specifically designated as love. As a metaphysical principle, the consent to being is an attempt to rethink the category of substance in terms of relation. The truly significant fact of the doctrine resides in an implicit theory of value-response—that value is objectively rooted in God, and that everything gives consent to it through man. Edwards' theology is an effort to place Newtonian physics into a wider frame of reference. He adapts the concepts of atoms, space, and gravity to an organic metaphysics of consent. Divine creation is a diffusive process of communication, and natural objects and events are called "images or shadows" because they bear an intrinsic relation to God's communicative nature. The specific agency of creation is to be found in the Incarnation, which is the capstone of his whole system of thought. Experience has held a position of preeminence among the major themes of American philosophy. The conclusion of this paper is that Edwards' philosophy can be viewed as the systematic explication of his doctrine of experience, and that it is possible to consider him an early exponent of the American tradition which gives experience a position of primacy in relation to thought.

This paper attempts to compare the ecc1esio1ogies of the fourth century Bishop of Hippo and the controversial twentieth century theo1ogian. In doing so, a study is made of each writer independently in order to extract his conceptual models of the Church. Special significance is given to the names each attributed to the Church and the consequences of these names as they pass from an analogical to an ecc1esio1ogica1 sphere. A study is also made of the functions of office within the Church with respect to the fulfillment of specific ministries. Here the two divide, Augustine meets the Donatist challenge by condemning disunity, while urging contemporary Christians to true internal reform, reminding them of the necessity of grace available only through the Church to heal their natures. Special attention is given to two specific topics from Augustine: the use of force to compel at least outward conformity, and the belief in the inability of man to do any good outside the Body of Christ. Kung diverges in another way in different times. He emphasizes the communal nature of the Church as those called by God and, on earth, represented by the ministry of ecclesiological office, including Ecumenical Councils and the Papacy. The Church, according to Kung, is the Kingdom of God moving towards manifestation and must reflect its apocalyptic nature by its witness and proclamation of the Word. He finds fault with the teaching office of the Church for its adherence to verbal propositions and concludes advocating a non-propositional attachment to kerygma. The contrast between the writers is sharply emphasized by a comparison of their positions on certain points, including authority, the Papacy and finally the four marks or distinguishing characteristics of the Church. The attitudes towards the first two differ markedly on some points, but a consistency of approach towards the four marks of the Church, with the exception of the Apostolic characteristic, can be seen. Several conclusions are propounded but the essence of each lies in the attitude of each writer towards human nature. Augustine finds the same wholly depraved without grace, which is given through the Word and human collaboration. Kung finds a response to divine call sufficient and is less concerned with limits on freedom in the name of love of neighbor. The interplay between these two schools of thought has punctuated Church history in the same manner as it does human history.

One of the most significant outcomes of Vatican II was a revival of the role of the laity in the life of the Catholic Church. Council documents offered a new ecclesial vision comprised of people of God united in baptism, with the mission of the Church becoming outward focused and the shared responsibility of all members. Fifty years later, there still exists a great pastoral need to encourage, recruit, and offer proper training and guidance to lay volunteers. This Pastoral Synthesis Project proposes that all parishes designate a Director of Stewardship to facilitate the process of all baptized members responding to the universal call to holiness and service.

No description available.

The object in writing this thesis has been to pursue the theological development of the doctrine of the trinity in the Church of the early centuries through the writings of the Church fathers. It is a continuation of a former study, A New Testament Study of Trinity, a thesis submitted for the Bachelor of Divinity degree, which was received in July, 1952. This entire study has been an attempt to soak the self in the patristic writings and to arrive at a first-hand conception of the classical doctrine of the trinity, which we believe, is a creation of the fourth century.