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Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / In theological education in the United States, writing is taught primarily as an individualistic pursuit in which students demonstrate knowledge acquisition and conformity to the standards of academic English. This creates significant problems for students who hail from educational, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds unlike that of the dominant academic context. To address these problems, educators must expand beyond our vision of writing as a utilitarian product created in solitude to see it as a process of student ethical transformation that assists students to construct voices that connect to who whey are and better relate to their audiences and their contexts of ministry. Several resources are explored to support theological educators in enacting this pedagogical shift: 1) composition theory and linguistics describing writing as a socio-rhetorical activity that can aid students in the generative struggle of creating voices; 2) intersectional theory for an analysis of the construction a major theological figure’s prophetic voice; and 3) South African Ubuntu theology to reframe writing as an intentional relational process concerned with the ethical dimensions of communication. The final chapter outlines a practical process of pedagogical change for learners in the classroom and for theological institutions themselves. Given the radical change in the context of ministry and the demographics of our student bodies, theological educators must transform how we teach writing in order to recognize and respond to the educational needs of our diverse students as they prepare for a wide range of vocational callings; to enliven theological writing in the academy; and to increase writing’s relevance and responsiveness to the world and church in which we live and share our lives of faith. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

This thesis argues that both Lollard efforts to disseminate heterodox opinions in simple terms for simple readers and the Church’s reactionary and ineffective endeavours to combat this heresy with legislation and writing of its own constrained fifteenth-century vernacular theological writing. First, I summarise the current debate about the restrictive aims and effects of legislative efforts to eliminate the Lollard heresy, and I outline the historical context leading up to and following Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409. The subsequent chapters trace the effects of ecclesiastical restrictions over time on vernacular theological writing. In Chapter 2, I explore the use of literary devices in two Lollard dialogues, and I argue that in the years preceding the Constitutions Lollard writers exhibited a readiness to employ literary tools as a means to persuade effectively. In Chapter 3, I argue that many of Langland’s major C revisions to Piers Plowman, undertaken in the aftermath of ecclesiastical restrictions, represent a response to Lollard-inspired rebel misreadings of the poem and sacrifice instances of bold poetic imagery as they endeavour to clarify doctrinal positions. In Chapter 4, I argue that Thorpe’s foregrounding of the generic conventions of hagiography in his Testimony reflects the pre-Constitutions readiness of Lollard writers to use literary tools to persuade simple readers. In Chapter 5, I argue that Love’s Church-sanctioned Mirror represented an orthodox tool in the war on heresy, but it failed to curb lay misinterpretation of theological issues. In Chapter 6, I argue that The Book of Margery Kempe serves as a reader’s response to Love’s Mirror and, therefore, demonstrates the ways in which Love’s orthodox text could be misread by orthodox readers. I conclude the thesis by considering the Lollard Lanterne of Li?t and Pecock’s orthodox vernacular theology. I argue that these works show that after the Constitutions both heterodox and orthodox writers demonstrated an increased urgency to tailor their writing for simple readers and that this tailoring meant, for both sides, an eschewing of literary features. I assert that the Church’s aggressive response to these works further constrained vernacular theological writing by suppressing its writers, readers, and circulation.

The word 'myth' appears frequently in contemporary theological and exegetical writing. Unfortunately, it is used with a variety of meanings by different authors, and this gives rise to the layman’s general misunderstanding of what is really a technical term. This thesis is an essay in the clarification of the notion of myth, through the use of the techniques of logical analysis of language. / Thesis / Bachelor of Divinity (BD)