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- ItemGod’s Sovereignty Amidst Evil: A Defense of the Complex Good of The Christian God With Reference to C.S. Lewis(2020) Lake, Sawyer ColeDespite the great strides humans have taken to eliminate suffering from the world, humanity has never seen an end to its oppressive power. No one is a stranger to the discomfort life naturally ushers in, but how can one make sense of perceived, perennial evil? The answer, according to the great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis, is trusting in the complex good of God. Lewis addresses, in apologetic fashion, theodicy1 in his seminal work, The Problem of Pain. He confronts many objections to the Christian faith by addressing the horrors of life while attempting to understand the nature of God. This idea of faith in the complexity of God’s goodness will be explored more directly, later in the thesis. Although many have written on the topic, the focus of this work is to illuminate the reality of God’s goodness by primarily looking at the theological framework of Lewis on the existence of evil, while engaging a variety of other works. The hope for everyone who reads this is that they, too, would understand the tangible hope God offers through Jesus Christ amidst the presence of cyclical, soul-crushing catastrophe.
- ItemThe Biblical Spirit and its Cognitive Functionality: A Jungian Hermeneutic of Biblical Theory(2019) Jimenez, JasmineA thesis on the ideal of psychological wellness according to Biblical theology as well as Jungian theory. 'I apply the vocabulary and framework of Dr. Carl G. Jung's model of the psyche to the theological mandates conducive to personal health found in Biblical scripture. C. G. Jung characterizes the human psyche as an exchange between the outer material/physical world and the inner psychic/spiritual realm. To Jung, one achieves proper personal integration by mediating the divisions of irrational and subconscious causes of one's motivation. Just like the authors of the New Testament, Jung posits the human spirit as the faculty foremost responsible to one's proper development. Accordingly, Jung's main hypothesis of a commonly inherited collective unconscious bolsters the notion of humanity's inherent spirituality and, further, religiosity. By establishing religion, or rather faith, as a faculty separate from, and yet tantamount in relation to reason, I aim with this thesis to reconcile the spiritual imperatives of the Bible with Jung's understanding of individual personhood.
- ItemRhetoric as a Revolutionary Tool: Anti-Catholic Propaganda During the American Revolution(1992) Steinert, Tamara L.During the British-American colonial era (1'607'1'776) anti-Catholic prejudice manifested itself in a political way, as Catholics were prevented from holding office and voting in the colonies. However, during the revolutionary period from 1763 to 1791, Catholics suddenly began receiving unprecedented political privilege despite the long history of religious and political conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This rapid change in the American political order can be partiality explained by comparing prerevolutionary era colonial documents with those that came afterwards' keeping in mind all the while the different political circumstances which motivated the documents. Anti-Catholicism always held some political meaning for American protestants of this period. However, the focus of anti-catholic political rhetoric changed over time. until 1763 anti-catholic prejudice was based on the tangible political threat posed by the French an Spanish colonies which surrounded the British colonies. with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French and Spanish ceased to be an immediate threat, and anti- Catholic rhetoric took on a new focus. From 1763 to 179'l' revolutionary propagandists used Catholicism to symbolize British tyranny, hoping to inspire popular support of the Revolution. In doing so, they appealed both to the Protestant religious heritage and to contemporary concerns about colonial autonomy. Thus, anti-Catholic propaganda did not express fear of Catholic political power, but fear of domination by any one political body, including the British government. As such, Catholics per se were not a political threat, and could be admitted to the political process. Furthermore, the anti-tyranny message communicated in anti-catholic propaganda helped revolutionary leaders formulate an understanding of religious liberty in which anything short of freedom for all groups meant risking tyranny by one.