cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.7274/25527391
title: Saving Jonathan Edwards' Ethics from Voluntarism

description: In this dissertation I save Jonathan Edwards’ ethics from leading interpretations of the last twenty years that have judged his metaphysical system to be implausible, bizarre, and incoherent. I “save” (or render coherent) Edwards’ metaphysical ethics by recontextualizing Edwards’ late works according to his own developing intentions. Next, I increase the plausibility of Edwards’ metaphysical by providing a new, clean presentation of his first principles alongside his theory of dual explanations (i.e. the vulgar/strict sense). Once we recontextualize Edwards’ metaphysics we see that it offers a coherent foundation upon which to build an ethical system. I then use these tools to vindicate Edwards’ metaphysical ethics from the charge that it is unacceptably voluntaristic. Again, by returning to Edwards’ context and sources we see that the “voluntarism” label is too broad. It is not one accusation, but as many as five. By distinguishing and explaining the various kinds of “voluntarism,” I show that Edwards is, on the contrary, an intellectualist on three fronts: human psychology, God’s relationship to morality, and God’s relationship to mathematics. As for the places where Edwards is “voluntaristic” – namely grace and election – I show that this commitment is trivially true in virtual of his Augustinian and Thomistic precedent. Edwards’ formulation of divine election incurs no new objection in contrast with that of Augustine and Aquinas. Edwards’ ethics should be retrieved today because his metaphysics has so much to offer moral theologians and philosophers.
DOI: 10.7274/25527391.v1
title: Saving Jonathan Edwards' Ethics from Voluntarism

description: In this dissertation I save Jonathan Edwards’ ethics from leading interpretations of the last twenty years that have judged his metaphysical system to be implausible, bizarre, and incoherent. I “save” (or render coherent) Edwards’ metaphysical ethics by recontextualizing Edwards’ late works according to his own developing intentions. Next, I increase the plausibility of Edwards’ metaphysical by providing a new, clean presentation of his first principles alongside his theory of dual explanations (i.e. the vulgar/strict sense). Once we recontextualize Edwards’ metaphysics we see that it offers a coherent foundation upon which to build an ethical system. I then use these tools to vindicate Edwards’ metaphysical ethics from the charge that it is unacceptably voluntaristic. Again, by returning to Edwards’ context and sources we see that the “voluntarism” label is too broad. It is not one accusation, but as many as five. By distinguishing and explaining the various kinds of “voluntarism,” I show that Edwards is, on the contrary, an intellectualist on three fronts: human psychology, God’s relationship to morality, and God’s relationship to mathematics. As for the places where Edwards is “voluntaristic” – namely grace and election – I show that this commitment is trivially true in virtual of his Augustinian and Thomistic precedent. Edwards’ formulation of divine election incurs no new objection in contrast with that of Augustine and Aquinas. Edwards’ ethics should be retrieved today because his metaphysics has so much to offer moral theologians and philosophers.
DOI: 10.7274/25595226
title: The Eclipse of the Word: The Problem of Modern Apophaticism

description: Over the last few decades, philosophical theology has witnessed an explosion of interest in negative theology and all things apophatic. As Denys Turner claims, “we are all apophatic theologians now.” This dissertation conducts a theological assessment of this apophatic turn and stages a Christological intervention. 

The first part, focusing on Grammatical Thomism and radical phenomenology/hermeneutics, questions the theological adequacy of modern apophaticisms. I argue that fear of “rationalism,” “ontotheology,” and turning God into “an object” have driven the field in general towards a hasty and indiscriminate embrace of a God entirely beyond speech. We encounter, in Kantian fashion, (1) a priori limits on human linguistic capacities and (2) models of transcendence which make collapse and failure their site. Language, emptied of all intelligible content, becomes an impermeable barrier between God and creation. Here negative theology comes unmoored (along with anthropology and the doctrine of God) from a broader and more capacious theology of language, one which would see creatures as divine speech, at once included in and empowered by the eternal utterance of a divine-human Word. Modern apophaticisms culminate in an unwittingly Nestorian theology of language, one that bars any linguistic communion between the divine and the human and undermines the perichoresis which makes revelation and Christology possible.

Following this diagnosis, the second part turns to contemporary French religious thought – specifically the work of Olivier-Thomas Venard and Jean-Louis Chrétien – in search of a more capacious theology of language centered on Christ’s composite person. By sketching an unbroken symbolic continuum spanning cosmos and Trinity – guaranteed by the Incarnate Word’s assumption and “magnetization” of speech – Venard seeks to “rebuild confidence in language” in the face of postmodernity’s “generalized agnosticism” and its obsession with abstract ineffability’s void. For his part, Chrétien performs an immanent critique of negative theology, showing that postmodern regard for silence, hospitality, and excess are best sheltered by linguistic audacity. Through the Mystical Body, humanity as polyphonic choir is incorporated into the Speech that goes from God to God, forever sheltered within “the ark of speech.”
DOI: 10.7274/25595226.v1
title: The Eclipse of the Word: The Problem of Modern Apophaticism

description: Over the last few decades, philosophical theology has witnessed an explosion of interest in negative theology and all things apophatic. As Denys Turner claims, “we are all apophatic theologians now.” This dissertation conducts a theological assessment of this apophatic turn and stages a Christological intervention. 

The first part, focusing on Grammatical Thomism and radical phenomenology/hermeneutics, questions the theological adequacy of modern apophaticisms. I argue that fear of “rationalism,” “ontotheology,” and turning God into “an object” have driven the field in general towards a hasty and indiscriminate embrace of a God entirely beyond speech. We encounter, in Kantian fashion, (1) a priori limits on human linguistic capacities and (2) models of transcendence which make collapse and failure their site. Language, emptied of all intelligible content, becomes an impermeable barrier between God and creation. Here negative theology comes unmoored (along with anthropology and the doctrine of God) from a broader and more capacious theology of language, one which would see creatures as divine speech, at once included in and empowered by the eternal utterance of a divine-human Word. Modern apophaticisms culminate in an unwittingly Nestorian theology of language, one that bars any linguistic communion between the divine and the human and undermines the perichoresis which makes revelation and Christology possible.

Following this diagnosis, the second part turns to contemporary French religious thought – specifically the work of Olivier-Thomas Venard and Jean-Louis Chrétien – in search of a more capacious theology of language centered on Christ’s composite person. By sketching an unbroken symbolic continuum spanning cosmos and Trinity – guaranteed by the Incarnate Word’s assumption and “magnetization” of speech – Venard seeks to “rebuild confidence in language” in the face of postmodernity’s “generalized agnosticism” and its obsession with abstract ineffability’s void. For his part, Chrétien performs an immanent critique of negative theology, showing that postmodern regard for silence, hospitality, and excess are best sheltered by linguistic audacity. Through the Mystical Body, humanity as polyphonic choir is incorporated into the Speech that goes from God to God, forever sheltered within “the ark of speech.”
DOI: 10.7274/25602471
title: Teresa Kearney and the Little Sisters of St. Francis in Eastern Africa: A Revolution of Tenderness

description: This dissertation narrates the story of Teresa Kearney between 1903-1957 and the Little Sisters of St. Francis in Eastern Africa between 1959-2023 to argue that this story embodied the theological themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries that resound through Pope’s Francis theology of a revolution of tenderness. 
The dissertation will be guided by three questions. Firstly, how did Kearney’s story embody the themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? Secondly, how do the Little Sisters of St. Francis extend Kearney’s themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? Finally, how does Pope Francis echo Kearney’s themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? 
Through archival research, interviews, and historical data on Kearney and the Little Sisters, the work is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the entire dissertation by introducing Kearney, the history of Uganda, the literature review, the rationale of the study, and the organization. In the second and third chapters, this project narrates Kearney’s story by locating these chapters around Kearney’s workplaces in Uganda. The second chapter narrates Kearney’s mission at Nsambya. Then the work locates Kearney at Nkokonjeru in the third chapter as she formed the Little Sisters, humanized what she called the lesser brethren (lepers), and separated the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa from the Franciscan Sisters of the Abbey. The fourth chapter reflects how the Little Sisters institutionalize Kearney’s work through its Superior Generals from 1959 through 2023. The fifth chapter examines how Mother Nasimiyu, one of the Little Sisters Superior Generals, advanced Kearney’s legacy of women empowerment through expansion, service to the poor, education, promotion of unity, and Kearney’s beatification Cause. The final chapter considers the pastoral and theological implications of Kearney’s story to the contemporary Church through the prism of Pope Francis and his theology of a revolution of tenderness. This theology is understood through the four themes of ecclesiology, mission, existential peripheries, and Franciscan spirituality that underline Kearney’s story. 
To understand the concreteness and workability of Pope Francis’ theology of a revolution of tenderness, the Church must narrate stories such as that of Kearney and the Little Sisters as people who have or are epitomizing Pope Francis’ theology.
DOI: 10.7274/25602471.v1
title: Teresa Kearney and the Little Sisters of St. Francis in Eastern Africa: A Revolution of Tenderness

description: This dissertation narrates the story of Teresa Kearney between 1903-1957 and the Little Sisters of St. Francis in Eastern Africa between 1959-2023 to argue that this story embodied the theological themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries that resound through Pope’s Francis theology of a revolution of tenderness. 
The dissertation will be guided by three questions. Firstly, how did Kearney’s story embody the themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? Secondly, how do the Little Sisters of St. Francis extend Kearney’s themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? Finally, how does Pope Francis echo Kearney’s themes of mission, accompaniment, and charity to the peripheries? 
Through archival research, interviews, and historical data on Kearney and the Little Sisters, the work is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the entire dissertation by introducing Kearney, the history of Uganda, the literature review, the rationale of the study, and the organization. In the second and third chapters, this project narrates Kearney’s story by locating these chapters around Kearney’s workplaces in Uganda. The second chapter narrates Kearney’s mission at Nsambya. Then the work locates Kearney at Nkokonjeru in the third chapter as she formed the Little Sisters, humanized what she called the lesser brethren (lepers), and separated the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa from the Franciscan Sisters of the Abbey. The fourth chapter reflects how the Little Sisters institutionalize Kearney’s work through its Superior Generals from 1959 through 2023. The fifth chapter examines how Mother Nasimiyu, one of the Little Sisters Superior Generals, advanced Kearney’s legacy of women empowerment through expansion, service to the poor, education, promotion of unity, and Kearney’s beatification Cause. The final chapter considers the pastoral and theological implications of Kearney’s story to the contemporary Church through the prism of Pope Francis and his theology of a revolution of tenderness. This theology is understood through the four themes of ecclesiology, mission, existential peripheries, and Franciscan spirituality that underline Kearney’s story. 
To understand the concreteness and workability of Pope Francis’ theology of a revolution of tenderness, the Church must narrate stories such as that of Kearney and the Little Sisters as people who have or are epitomizing Pope Francis’ theology.
DOI: 10.7274/25971580
title: Thomas Aquinas on Trinitarian Action: The Essential Unity and Personal Character of Divine Action in Creation and Salvation

description: Scripture presents a God who is at work in a dazzling array of activities: creating, blessing, destroying, calling, sending, judging, consoling, listening, saving, teaching, and guiding. How can one understand this activity from a trinitarian perspective? Thomas Aquinas offers a set of resources relevant to both historical and systematic theologians. In contrast to scholars who present a merely essentialist reading of Aquinas on divine action, I argue that he presents a deeply personalist vision of divine action that accounts for both the essential unity and personal character of divine action, such that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be said to act inseparably, yet in distinctly relational modes. The personal character of divine action is not simply appropriated to the persons: it is truly theirs in a proper and incommunicable way. Thus, the extrinsic activity of the persons is inseparable, since one and the same divine essence is the principle of their action. And yet, the divine persons act in distinctly relational ways, for the persons act in the way that they exist, and they exist as subsistent relations. For Thomas, then, each divine person is an acting subject with a distinct personality, furthering the story of creation and salvation.
DOI: 10.7274/25971580.v1
title: Thomas Aquinas on Trinitarian Action: The Essential Unity and Personal Character of Divine Action in Creation and Salvation

description: Scripture presents a God who is at work in a dazzling array of activities: creating, blessing, destroying, calling, sending, judging, consoling, listening, saving, teaching, and guiding. How can one understand this activity from a trinitarian perspective? Thomas Aquinas offers a set of resources relevant to both historical and systematic theologians. In contrast to scholars who present a merely essentialist reading of Aquinas on divine action, I argue that he presents a deeply personalist vision of divine action that accounts for both the essential unity and personal character of divine action, such that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be said to act inseparably, yet in distinctly relational modes. The personal character of divine action is not simply appropriated to the persons: it is truly theirs in a proper and incommunicable way. Thus, the extrinsic activity of the persons is inseparable, since one and the same divine essence is the principle of their action. And yet, the divine persons act in distinctly relational ways, for the persons act in the way that they exist, and they exist as subsistent relations. For Thomas, then, each divine person is an acting subject with a distinct personality, furthering the story of creation and salvation.
DOI: 10.7274/26241071
title: The Disciplined and the Damned: Problematic Insiders and Countermeasures to Them in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Matthew

description: This study compares discipline in the Gospel of Matthew with the Essene rules. Scholarly comparison often focuses on individual disciplinary aspects, like rebuke. However, a holistic approach—the study of what behaviors are considered problematic together with the various countermeasures employed against them—illuminates the ideology undergirding the particular disciplinary apparatus of each. Matthew and the sectarian rules from Qumran differ in three significant ways. First, the Essene rules center on the protection of the community, while Matthew prioritizes on individual reform. Second, one’s eschatological fate is fixed and discernible in Essene literature, while it remains fluid and ambivalent in Matthew. Third, there is greater overlap between human disciplinary measures and divine prerogatives in the sectarian Scrolls than in Matthew. This project’s holistic approach also has particular benefit for Matthean studies. Building upon the view that this gospel was intended for a wide audience, I contend that Matthew outlines a disciplinary process that does not depend on a particular communal structure. Instead, eschatological threat is the main countermeasure to infractions. Ambiguity in regard to who will be saved—a phenomenon that sometimes puzzles Matthean scholars—is an intentional feature that ensures Matthew’s eschatological threat can be leveraged continuously.
DOI: 10.7274/26241071.v1
title: The Disciplined and the Damned: Problematic Insiders and Countermeasures to Them in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Matthew

description: This study compares discipline in the Gospel of Matthew with the Essene rules. Scholarly comparison often focuses on individual disciplinary aspects, like rebuke. However, a holistic approach—the study of what behaviors are considered problematic together with the various countermeasures employed against them—illuminates the ideology undergirding the particular disciplinary apparatus of each. Matthew and the sectarian rules from Qumran differ in three significant ways. First, the Essene rules center on the protection of the community, while Matthew prioritizes on individual reform. Second, one’s eschatological fate is fixed and discernible in Essene literature, while it remains fluid and ambivalent in Matthew. Third, there is greater overlap between human disciplinary measures and divine prerogatives in the sectarian Scrolls than in Matthew. This project’s holistic approach also has particular benefit for Matthean studies. Building upon the view that this gospel was intended for a wide audience, I contend that Matthew outlines a disciplinary process that does not depend on a particular communal structure. Instead, eschatological threat is the main countermeasure to infractions. Ambiguity in regard to who will be saved—a phenomenon that sometimes puzzles Matthean scholars—is an intentional feature that ensures Matthew’s eschatological threat can be leveraged continuously.
DOI: 10.7274/26241074
title: Licit Idols: The Roles of Divinized Furniture in the Hebrew Bible

description: Though scholars have argued for at least the past fifteen years that YHWH overlaps with material realia in the Bible, the exegetical implications of that overlap have tended to go unnoticed. Specialized studies of YHWH and materiality are not exegetical in scope, and works of exegesis normally do not allow “identification” as a conceptual category for explaining how texts present YHWH’s relation to an object. This dissertation aims to bridge these two worlds by proposing that YHWH overlaps with cultic appurtenances in 1 Samuel 4–6 and Numbers 31 and that this overlap serves to situate the deity in relation to specific events in Israel’s (biblical) past. 
 
The dissertation adopts and adapts three criteria that the Assyriologist Barbara N. Porter created for identifying non-anthropomorphic gods in Mesopotamian texts. Biblical scholars have become aware of these criteria but have yet to use them for appreciating YHWH’s relation to materiality. Applying them to 1 Samuel 4–6 reveals multiple points at which characters call the ark YHWH or ascribe agency to it—without correction or censure from the narrator. In addition, Porter’s criteria assist in appreciating that ?????? ????????? transport YHWH to the battle with Midian in Numbers 31.
The dissertation concludes that 1 Samuel 7 draws from YHWH’s identification with the ark from 1 Samuel 4–6 to protest the rise of the monarchy in Israel, while YHWH reappears as the ark in 2 Samuel 6 and 15 to express divine approval for the Davidic dynasty. As for Numbers 31, YHWH’s overlap with ?????? ????????? contributes to the chapter’s reversal of the disaster of Israel’s first attempt to take Canaan in Numbers 14: whereas the ark expresses YHWH’s absence in battle in Numbers 14, ?????? ????????? in Numbers 31 shows the deity’s accompaniment to war. These findings suggest that YHWH appears in unexpected forms elsewhere in the Bible and invite a consideration of whether contemporary theologies need to make room for God’s physically manifest presence in the unfolding of events in our world.
DOI: 10.7274/26241074.v1
title: Licit Idols: The Roles of Divinized Furniture in the Hebrew Bible

description: Though scholars have argued for at least the past fifteen years that YHWH overlaps with material realia in the Bible, the exegetical implications of that overlap have tended to go unnoticed. Specialized studies of YHWH and materiality are not exegetical in scope, and works of exegesis normally do not allow “identification” as a conceptual category for explaining how texts present YHWH’s relation to an object. This dissertation aims to bridge these two worlds by proposing that YHWH overlaps with cultic appurtenances in 1 Samuel 4–6 and Numbers 31 and that this overlap serves to situate the deity in relation to specific events in Israel’s (biblical) past. 
 
The dissertation adopts and adapts three criteria that the Assyriologist Barbara N. Porter created for identifying non-anthropomorphic gods in Mesopotamian texts. Biblical scholars have become aware of these criteria but have yet to use them for appreciating YHWH’s relation to materiality. Applying them to 1 Samuel 4–6 reveals multiple points at which characters call the ark YHWH or ascribe agency to it—without correction or censure from the narrator. In addition, Porter’s criteria assist in appreciating that ?????? ????????? transport YHWH to the battle with Midian in Numbers 31.
The dissertation concludes that 1 Samuel 7 draws from YHWH’s identification with the ark from 1 Samuel 4–6 to protest the rise of the monarchy in Israel, while YHWH reappears as the ark in 2 Samuel 6 and 15 to express divine approval for the Davidic dynasty. As for Numbers 31, YHWH’s overlap with ?????? ????????? contributes to the chapter’s reversal of the disaster of Israel’s first attempt to take Canaan in Numbers 14: whereas the ark expresses YHWH’s absence in battle in Numbers 14, ?????? ????????? in Numbers 31 shows the deity’s accompaniment to war. These findings suggest that YHWH appears in unexpected forms elsewhere in the Bible and invite a consideration of whether contemporary theologies need to make room for God’s physically manifest presence in the unfolding of events in our world.