No description available.

Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / Employing a Christian practice approach to pastoral theology (one that is interdisciplinary in its scope), this dissertation argues that Augustine's mystagogical theology and catechesis provides the basis for a contemporary liturgical formation that transforms human experience into liturgical existence through the practice of worshipful wisdom. Chapter one considers the formative nature of liturgical worship. Both liturgical theologians and catechists view liturgical prayer as a privileged source for liturgical formation. That is, the liturgy mediates an experience and lived knowledge of the Christian message through its performance, one that forms the Christian in a way of life. The first chapter concludes by acknowledging recent scholarship in liturgical studies that has been critical of this approach to formation through liturgical prayer. Fruitful participation in this prayer, one that contributes to a way of life characterized by a life infused with liturgical meaning, requires the appropriation of specific theological and spiritual dispositions that are essential to any act of Christian worship. Yet, what are the theological and spiritual dispositions required for fruitful liturgical worship? Chapter two does not answer this question directly but rather offers a heuristic through the ritual models of Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and Catherine Bell. This chapter suggests that for ritual prayer to function fruitfully, one must acquire specific dispositions, ways of knowing and practicing, necessary for any act of worship within a religion. In addition, ritual prayer presumes a specific telos, an end toward which the human person is directed and formed through ritual engagement. Finally, ritual prayer is formative when it leads to the acquisition of a certain habitus, a way of acting in which the ritual agent becomes capable of "ritualizing" in other areas of life. While these disciplines cannot provide a Christian specificity to liturgical worship, they can suggest the foundational questions that will guide liturgical theologians and catechists as they consider the theological and spiritual dispositions necessary for Christian liturgical prayer. Chapters three, four, and five, serve as an interruption to the more common approaches to liturgical theology and catechesis analyzed in the first chapter. In chapter three, I consider the mystagogical theology of Augustine of Hippo. For Augustine, Christian worship is intrinsic to the process of salvation in Christ, a renewal of human perception in which the signs of the created world are to be used to enjoy the reality of God. This renewal of human perception takes place through entrance into the school of Christ--the Church's reading of the Scriptures and its sacramental celebrations. To participate fruitfully in liturgical worship, thus requires the capacity to use the signs of the Scriptures and the liturgical rites to enjoy God through deeper understanding of the texts and practice under examination. This is what I will call practicing worshipful wisdom. In chapter four, I contemplate what the Christian becomes through this fruitful worship, particularly in the Eucharistic celebration. Through the Eucharistic pedagogy of faith, the Christian becomes a sacrifice of love offered to God. In this transformation of human identity, the renewal of the Christian made in the image and likeness of God, the Christian's memory, understanding and will grow into a site for divine sacrifice. Thus, the interior life of divine contemplation is more perfectly expressed in one's visible actions. The Christian, within the life of the Church, becomes a living Eucharistic sign. Finally in chapter five, I conclude with an analysis of Augustine's mystagogical pedagogy. I argue that Augustine's sermons are rhetorical performances, using the signs of Scripture, to form the imaginations of Christians, their way of thinking about God, and to lead the congregation to become what they received in the preaching event. One learns about the liturgical act in the context of the Christian narrative, as a cultivation of memory; thinks about the practice through a theological seeking that is oriented toward both conversion and prayer, cultivating understanding; and then performs the practice anew through the results of these exercises, cultivating love. In chapter six, this Augustinian mystagogical approach is interrupted by the contemporary context of the Catholic parish. This interruption first includes a diagnosis of the primary malaise effecting religious practice in the United States--secularization. American secularization consists of an attenuation of the religious imagination, a discomfort with theological thinking, and an emphasis upon individual flourishing. Then, this chapter turns to contemporary educational theory, including John Dewey and Etienne Wenger, as a way of discerning how to perform this Augustinian mystagogical approach in a secular age through the catechetical ministry of the parish. I conclude that an Augustinian mystagogical approach in the present context requires a de-habituation from previous ways of thinking, as well as an intelligent socialization into a mystagogical imagination within communities of practice. Finally, in chapter seven, I set forth a plan of formation in which the whole catechetical life of a parish becomes an initiation into the practice of worshipful wisdom through the four fundamental tasks of catechesis and an Augustinian mystagogical approach to catechetical pedagogy. By means of this Augustinian mystagogical formation, the Christian learns to offer all of one's existence as a sacrifice to God, the Eucharistic vocation of the Christian. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Boyd Coolman / This study considers the development of Augustine's early soteriology in the years leading up to and including his writing of Confessions. Central to that inquiry is a treatment of his increasing use of the term humilitas. Yet that inquiry necessitates a broader account of the fallen soul and its healing by the Incarnate Savior. The result is a mostly chronological survey that shows Augustine developing clearer connections between his soteriology, Christology, and sacramental theology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Mission studies are checkpoints in the lifecycle of many Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations yet these curricula of transition need an overhaul to ensure their efficacy and to identify potential improvements. By evaluating several behavioral models (including Quinn’s Advanced Change Theory, and leadership models by Fluker and Olsen), the author constructs a curriculum centered around a congregational study of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper that fulfills the function of a mission study. In so doing, he provides an alternative for churches seeking to achieve the requirements of such a study while equipping them to discern God’s call in the ever-changing world.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis examines the life and thought of the influential Melbourne organist, teacher and music critic, Arthur Ernest Howard Nickson (1876-1964). Born in Melbourne, Nickson studied in England on the Clarke Scholarship at the Royal College of Music (1895-1899). During his studies in England, Nickson experienced the Catholic revival in the Church of England at its height. On his return to Australia in 1901 Nickson’s activities as a church musician, and later, as a teacher provided the platform for him to articulate views that were formed as a result of these influences. Beginning in 1904, Nickson’s 56-year career as a lecturer at the University Of Melbourne Conservatorium Of Music is important, as every student had to pass through his lectures at some point in their course. As music critic at the Age from 1927, Nickson played a decisive role in shaping public taste at the time of the establishment of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Heinze, who was also Ormond Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne (1926-57). Nickson’s essays form a distinct group of writings that are probably unique in Australia. The main published essays cover a forty-year period beginning in 1905, and show the development of Nickson’s thinking about the moral basis and spiritual nature of music, his views on the nature of the Church, and his worldview, based on Neoplatonic philosophy, which shaped his thinking about the process of creation. While Nickson’s view of the created order was shaped by Neoplatonic influences, his view of the redemptive function of art was expressed in terms of sacramental theology, and was related very closely to his Anglo-Catholicism. In his essays and lectures Nickson frequently worked with an abstracted concept of ‘Art’, rather than specific art objects. While reference was made to art objects, it is not clear how Nickson defined the term ‘artist’. Nickson’s attention in his discussions of ‘Art’ tended to focus on the artist, rather than the object. This was a result of his world view, which saw art objects as an emanation from the personality of the artist; this necessitated the cultivation of a disposition of mind, which was enabled by the acquisition of mystical intuition. While his description of the fine arts as consisting of architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry and music was in line with older views of art, his views on the artist are difficult to discern, which raises the question of whether Nickson saw himself as an artist. Clearly his vocation was not as a composer, as the discussion of his mass settings in Chapter 3 will demonstrate, while as an organ teacher he was more interested in interpretation than in the mechanics of playing the instrument. This thesis falls into two broad sections. The first three chapters seek to provide an adequate biography of Nickson, which has never previously been done. The fourth chapter examines Nickson’s worldview and the implications this had for his thinking about music, and falls into two parts. The first part follows Nickson’s worldview as it was expressed in his essays, and focuses attention on the concept of art as a process of sign making. The manner in which this sign making is understood is essential to its function, and in Nickson’s writings three understandings emerge: symbol, metaphor and sacrament. The second part of the discussion examines Nickson’s articulation of his worldview in relation to music, which he considered to be the most divine of the arts, drawing on lecture notes, student reminiscences and Nickson’s own. Nickson’s central claim was that art is a sacrament. This can be seen in relation to his faith, where the regular use of the Church’s sacraments was central. This claim is challenged by statements Nickson made about the faith of composers such as Beethoven and Bach. This raises questions about sacramental efficacy when applied to art, and some limitations implicit in viewing art as a sacrament. It will be argued that Nickson conceived of artistic creation as fundamentally a process of sign making. The sign may be regarded as a symbol, metaphor or sacrament, and the process of creating the sign reflects God’s own creative activity in human creative acts. Nickson conceived of human creative action as having a redemptive character, bringing the artist into closer unity with the godhead. This union was the ultimate aim of art, being the act of redemption that paralleled the union brought about by such sacraments as the Eucharist. This term also points to some tensions in Nickson’s worldview, where he expressed a view of the creation of the material world as being both a dynamic, continuing activity of emanation from God, and a single action of the will of God, such as the creation account of Genesis.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of the doctrine of deification in sacramental worship as taught (and practiced) by the Eastern Orthodox and Latter-day Saint (Mormon) churches. The doctrine that man may become like God—known as deification, divinization, or theosis—is a central teaching in the Orthodox and Mormon traditions. Both faiths believe that man may become like God. However, because of doctrinal presuppositions and disagreements regarding the natures of God and man, Orthodox and Mormon teachings of deification do not mean the same thing. This thesis will outline several key distinctions between their respective doctrines. And yet, despite doctrinal disagreements, this thesis will also illustrate how Orthodoxy and Mormonism share several notable similarities regarding the function of sacramental worship in the process of theosis. Mormonism and Orthodoxy both believe that men and women may achieve theosis only as they interact with God. Through the combined initiatives of the Father, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, humankind may receive the attributes of divinity and participate in the process of deification. The means whereby humanity may interact with God are through sacramental participation. This thesis will illustrate how institutional rituals and personal worship practices foster man's divine interaction and ultimate deification. Furthermore, Orthodox and Mormon rituals are deeply rooted in the doctrine of deification—each ritual contributing to man's divine transformation. As such, those rituals reflect numerous thematic variations and emphatic differences of their respective traditions. This should not discourage the reader from comparing Orthodox sacraments with Mormon sacraments; rather, as one studies the similarities and differences in the Orthodox and Mormon sacraments, he or she will begin to see how deification is so intricately woven into the worship practices of these two faiths.

No description available.

The thesis is organized as two sections of two chapters each: the first section establishes a theoretical framework of a broad and reinvigorated Christian sacramentality within which to situate the second—an investigation of the theories and practice of the mythopoeic art of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien in this sacramental light. The first chapter acknowledges the thoroughgoing disenchantment of modernity, an effect traced to the vanishing of a sacramental understanding of the world, and then explores the history of the sacramental concept that would seek to be reclaimed and reconceived as a possible means of the re-enchantment of Western culture such as in the recent work of David Brown. An appreciative critique of Brown's work is offered in chapter two before proposing an alternative understanding of a distinctly Christian and reinvigorated sacramentality anchored in the Incarnation and operating by Transposition. A notion of sacramental vision is developed from the perceptual basis in its classic definitions, and a sacramental understanding of story is considered from a theological perspective on the infinite generativity of meaning in texts, along with recent theories of affect and affordance. The second half of the thesis expounds the views of mythopoeia held by Lewis and Tolkien in order to show how they are not only compatible with but lead to a sacramental understanding of story as developed in part one, with mythopoeia affording the recovery of a potentially transformative vision of reality, awakening it into focus in distinctly Christian ways (chapter three). The final chapter demonstrates how their mythopoeic theories are exemplified in their art, examining specific ways Till We Have Faces and The Lord of the Rings afford the recovery of a potentially transformative vision of various themes central to them. In closing it is suggested that such a sacramental understanding of story may contribute to the re-enchantment of Western culture, not to mention the re-mythologization and re-envisaging of Christianity, whose significance in these regards has been hitherto mostly unrecognized.