Browsing HDS Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 10-29 of 51
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Carnal Resurrection: Sexuality and Sexual Difference in Early Christianity
This dissertation explores the ways in which early Christians thought about resurrected bodies in terms of desires, sexual practices, and roles, as well as in terms of how maleness and femaleness are distinguished. The ... -
Contesting the Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Home: Feminist and Postcolonial Politics of Space
Although the rhetoric of home is broadly used and may seem banal, it is a notion that has been significantly contested in recent decades. This dissertation critically analyzes the politics of space within the rhetoric of ... -
Devotions of Desire: Changing Gods, Changing People at a Transylvanian Pilgrimage Site
(2015-04-16)This dissertation describes how desiring subjects make devotional worlds in times of radical change. I argue that what is centrally at stake for people who pass through the Şumuleu Ciuc (Hungarian: Csíksomlyó) pilgrimage ... -
"Earn the Grace of Prophecy": Early Christian Prophecy as Practice
(2016-09-27)This dissertation explores discussions of prophecy in early Christianity focusing on Origen of Alexandria’s works. It argues that Origen engages the contested terms of prophetic activity to persuade his audience(s) toward ... -
"Elementally Interrupted": Divine and Human Freedom in the Thought of Eberhard Jüngel
This study's principal goal is to engage Eberhard Jüngel's views on freedom and, with the help of this engagement, to think through the intimate connection of the doctrine of God and anthropology. This larger goal contains ... -
Empire and Ekklēsia: Mapping the Function of Ekklēsia Rhetoric in the Book of Revelation
(2015-05-19)This dissertation explores the function of ekklēsia rhetoric in the Book of Revelation, and demonstrates its role in addressing various issues within the seven ekklēsiai and their inscribed rhetorical situation, including: ... -
Experiencing the Word: Dionysian Mystical Theology in the Commentaries of Thomas Gallus (d.1246)
(2017-09-20)The mystical theology of Thomas Gallus, “the last great Victorine,” was inseparable from his theology of sacred literature. This dissertation analyzes Gallus’s major works: his commentaries on the Song of Songs and the ... -
‘A Firestone of Divine Love’ Erotic Desire and the Ephemeral Flame of Hispanic Jesuit Mysticism
(2015-05-11)A Firestone of Divine Love serves as capstone of two years Jesuit ministry and fifteen of academic study. It extends nine articles into a book project to be published by Gorgias Press. Its original thesis appeared as: In ... -
Forgeries of Desire: The Erotics of Authenticity in New Testament Historiography
(2021-10-29)Situated at the intersection of the study of the New Testament, the theorizing of Christian origins, and queer historiography, this dissertation examines the ways in which biblical scholarship’s pursuit of historical ... -
From The River:Jesuit Missions and Exemplarity in Spanish Colonial Philippines 1581-1768
This dissertation is about Jesuit missionaries and discrete moments of translation, accommodation and exemplarity from the time of their arrival in the Philippines to their expulsion in 1768. Using an interdisciplinary ... -
Harnessing the Prophetic Voice: Rewriting and Allusion in Prophetic Collections from the Second Century B.C.E.
This dissertation examines the use of hypertextual and allusive compositional practices in prophetic collections from the second century B.C.E. Our analysis centers on the three best-preserved examples: 4QApocryphon of ... -
“I am going to do it": The Complex Question of Action in Theology and Science in the Life of America's First Woman Minister, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921)
(2015-05-11)Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) became one of the most outspoken and remarkable women of her era: an ordained minister, a published author, a prominent public speaker, and a philosophical thinker whose writings ... -
Implicate and Transgress: Marcella Althaus-Reid, Writing, and a Transformation of Theological Knowledge
(2015-05-11)Marcella Althaus-Reid sought wherever language or meaning might shift or exceed their possibilities. To do so, she pushed theology from the light into the dark. In the spaces of political, economic, and sexual struggle, ... -
"Is the LORD in Our Midst or Not?" Conceptions of Divine Presence in Ancient Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Calf Incident
This study examines various notions of divine presence as integral to the depiction of Israel's apostasy at Mount Sinai within the redacted Pentateuch as well as to interpretations of that composite text by ancient Jews ... -
Language and Religion in Modern India: The Vernacular Literature of Hindi Christians
(2016-06-21)A persistent interest in a particular type of Christian witness is found in a substantial amount of Hindi-language Protestant (hereafter, ‘Hindi Christian’) literature in modern India. Across a range of texts like Hindi ... -
Law, Equity, and Calvin's Moral Critique of Protestant Faith
This dissertation examines the themes of law and equity in John Calvin's moral and legal thought. Part One of the dissertation focuses on Calvin's immanent critique of Lutheran faith, particularly his nuanced recalibration ... -
The Origins of the Apocalypse of Abraham
(2016-05-17)The Apocalypse of Abraham, a pseudepigraphon only extant in a fourteenth century Old Church Slavonic manuscript, has not received much attention from scholars of Ancient Judaism, due in part to a lack of readily available ... -
Perceiving Splendor: The "Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses" in Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics
This study argues that the so-called "doctrine of the spiritual senses" should be recognized as a vital component of the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988). The doctrine of the spiritual senses ... -
Religious Practices of the Enslaved: A Case Study of Roman Ephesos
Enslaved persons were ubiquitous in the first- and second- century CE Roman Empire, and early Christian texts, in particular, reflect this fact. Nevertheless the implications of enslaved presence in religious practices are ... -
The Rhetoric of PIETAS: The Pastoral Epistles and Claims to Piety in the Roman Empire
(2015-05-11)This dissertation reads the Pastoral Epistles alongside imperial propaganda, monumental inscriptions, and philosophical writings of the Roman period to determine how claims to piety (Greek: εὐσέβεια, Latin: pietas) advanced ...