Library: Philosophy, Religion, and Theology

This study investigated the impact that women’s body image had on prehistoric, ancient Greek, and developing Jewish and Tibetan Buddhist religions. Questions focused on the validity of a Mother Goddess concept, the justifications used to reinforce negativity about women’s bodies, and the roles women assumed to maintain their spirituality. The evolution of patriarchal leadership was investigated, given the archeological evidence that women’s biological functions were seen as connected to the divine world and in parallel with the mysteries of nature. Data was drawn from arch...

Shamanism, hypnosis, imaginal psychotherapies, and meditation are based on the use of what we in the modern western world think of as non-ordinary human consciousness. These four modalities have fundamental similarities and differences in purpose, theory, technique, type of alternative consciousness, and their application of non-ordinary reality. Shamanism, the oldest and most intertwined with the cultures in which it is practiced, will be explored as a model for individual healing and transformation and professional training. The shamanic way will also be explored as a model of consciousness ...

The concern of this thesis is with the history of ideas; specifically, the history of recent theological ideas. This thesis is not a work of systematic theology but rather situates discourse about a theological problem within the matrix of some relevant contemporary thought. Its category then is the history of the development of ideas. In the late twentieth century many academic theologians found the intelligibility of the traditional language used about the Christian Trinitarian God to be problematic. This is the thesis’ research problem. The research hypothesis is that these recent ac...

Spiritual healing modalities are powerful tools, which enhance holistic and allopathic methods in caring for special needs children. This research paper explores four methods of spiritual healing, which benefit disabled children on all levels of existence. The spiritual healing techniques of Touch Therapy, Sound Therapy, Channeling and Love Therapy address the unique mind-body-spirit requirements of the pediatric special needs community. Spiritual healing empowers parents and caretakers to take the responsibility of healing into their own homes and to enhance communication with their child ...

Reiki is an emerging adjunctive therapy that claims to provide physical and psychological healing as well as an experience of spiritual connection. It is increasingly employed in counseling centers, hospitals, and even churches. Reiki is believed by many to be a safe, non-invasive healing intervention that draws individuals towards God. Reiki practitioners maintain that they imitate Jesus’ laying on of hands and claim that their praxis is essentially the same as the healing used by Jesus as well as by Buddha. An ethnographic multi-case study was performed comparing the experiences of nine ind...

Evangelical interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:8-15 (certainly at the level of detail) has, in the period from 1945 to 2001, changed from one of received consensus to confused plurality. This thesis provides an explanation of this phenomenon by identifying and analysing the influences within evangelical interpretation that contributed to and shaped it. The first part of the thesis (Section A) is foundational. It establishes the validity of using the term Evangelical as an heuristic concept and provides, by means of a wide-ranging and unique analysis of published discussions of 1 Timothy 2:8-15, t...

In 1904-1905 Max Weber published the sociological classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this book Weber argues that religion, specifically “ascetic Protestantism” provided the essential social and cultural infrastructure that led to modern capitalism. Weber’s suggests that Protestantism has “an affinity for capitalism.” Indeed, something within Protestantism—by accident or design—creates the necessary preconditions that lead to the flowering of a just, free, and prosperous society. At the same time, Weber wonders if the economic backwardness of certain societies and...

The revision of Origen's philosophical theology by St. Maximus the Confessor resulted in an eschatology involving the replacement of the human ego by the divine presence. In this study, I will examine the theological developments that led to this loss of a sense of human freedom and creativity in the face of the divine, tracing the influence of Origen's eschatology through the Cappadocian Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus and others, up to Maximus. This will allow me to show the manner in which Origen's humanistic theology was misunderstood and misinterpreted throughout the Patristic era, culminati...

Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, the basic tenet of dispensationalism (a school of Protestant theology which holds that God deals with humankind in different ways in different periods of time called dispensations) has been that the church and Israel are two sharply distinct peoples of God. The distinction is theological in nature; specifically, anthropological (pertaining to humanity), soteriological (pertaining to salvation), and eschatological (pertaining to last things). The tenet of theological distinctiveness has always been the cornerstone for the dispensationalist's ...

This dissertation seeks to establish that there is a renaissance of Thomistic Philosophy in the Post-Conciliar Catholic Church, specifically a reawakening of Scholasticism, as evidenced by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) ushered in a new era for the Roman Catholic religion prompted by the desire of Pope John XXIII to have the 2,000 year old institution catch up with the modern world and address current problems as well as present the ancient faith in contemporary ways. Prior to Vatican II, there was a monolithic way to explain fait...