Now showing items 21-40 of 86

    • Discovering Connection: The Dynamic Tension and a 'More-Than' in an Eckhartian Conception of Soul

      Sweetman, Robert; Schulz-Wackerbarth, Yorick Immanuel; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2004-02)
      This thesis is first and foremost the result of my grappling with the works of Meister Eckhart. Accordingly, I intend to present here my reading of Eckhart's thought. This reading, my struggle to interpret the Meister, was, from the beginning, however, motivated by the aim to join a certain conversation. This conversation is what I have come to know as 'Christian philosophy'. I am new to the circles of those who admit to be participating in this scandalous project, yet already I have become quite aware of the controversy pervading this notion. It comes to the fore not only in the critical voices from the 'outside', questioning its meaning, relevance and legitimacy, but also in a lack of 'internal' consensus concerning its entailments. This is not necessarily a point of criticism on my part. In fact, I am much a proponent of conversations or projects that have an openness to them and lack clear cut deliminations. It does, however, make a brief apologia in preparation to this thesis necessary. I have no ambition whatsoever to state here what Christian philosophy is or should be. God forbid! I merely deem it important to place my project in context, and for that purpose I intend here to point out to the reader the direction I am facing. Thus, what needs to be clarified at the outset of my argument is that particular understanding of Christian philosophy this thesis intends to engage. The question here is, where and how to locate the conversation this thesis hopes to join. [from Prologue, p. 3]
    • Dooyeweerd's Theory of Individuality Structure as an Alternative to a Substance Position, Especially That of Aristotle

      Hart, Hendrik; Zigterman, Kent; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1977-07)
    • Debating the Past and Future: an Analysis of Conflicting Views of History Within the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, 1974-1977

      McIntire, C. T.; MacRury, Malcolm Hector; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1984)
    • Philosophical Anthropology: An Interpretive Analysis of Paul Ricoeur's Philosophy of Will

      Olthuis, James H.; Venema, Henry I.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1986)
    • Ernst Troeltsch's Final Phase of Thought: Historical Methodology

      Wolters, Albert M.; Rogers, Robert Harris; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1981-08)
    • Reflections On the Nature and Method of Theology at the University of Leyden Before the Synod of Dordt

      Olthuis, James H.; Sinnema, Donald; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1975)
    • Paul Tillich: His Anthropology As Key To The Structure Of His Thought

      Olthuis, James H.; Tollefson, Terry Ray; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1977-05)
    • Operationalizing and Quantification: Some Methodological Problems in Recent Social Science

      Zylstra, Bernard; Marshall, Paul A.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1980-06)
    • On the Problem of Common Ground: Van Til, Dooyeweerd and Thomas Kuhn

      Hart, Hendrik; Lee, Joongjae; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2001)
    • Eros and Agape in the Sexual Ethics of Helmut Thielicke

      Zylstra, Bernard; Olthuis, James H.; Malarkey, Robert L.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1980-08)
    • The Concept of the Coincidentia Oppositorium In the Thought of Mircea Eliade

      Olthuis, James H.; Valk, John; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1979-08)
    • Evolutionary Monism: The Continuity of John Hick's Thought

      Olthuis, James H.; Shaw, Stephen; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1985-08)
    • A 'Sex'tet on Love: New Visions for Female Subjectivity and Mutuality

      Olthuis, James H.; Neufeld, Jennifer; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2006-05)
      A love ethic is the ground of agency and subjectivity for both men and women, and mutuality is the heart of love. Many feminist scholars are working to articulate and understand love by examining women's identity and language. In this thesis, I explore a language used for love and desire through theoretical examination and poetic expression. Using a dialectical relationship between the text and the reader, this project demonstrates that mutual love depends on access to language that can express love and sexuality. Three central texts are used: 'All About Love: New Visions' by bell hooks, 'I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History' by Luce Irigaray and 'Love Lyrics from the Bible: The Song of Songs, a New Translation' by Marcia Falk. In six sections of theoretic analysis and poetry, I show that female subjectivity and agency are conditions for mutuality in both love and sexuality.
    • Sexually Transforming Salvation: a Reading of Luce Irigaray's Insistence on Sexual Difference

      Olthuis, James H.; VanderBerg, Natasja; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2005-12)
      This thesis suggests that Luce Irigaray's recent focus on spirituality in 'Luce Irigaray: key writings' makes explicit themes already suggested by her career-long insistence on the importance of sexual difference. It traces Irigaray's imagination of a dynamic, life-giving duality of sexual difference, suggesting that Irigaray's sexual difference displaces western philosophy's division between the natural and the spiritual; the earth and the sky; and mortals and the divine. In Irigaray's philosophy, cultivating sexual difference between men and women is the key to relinking the natural and the spiritual. This thesis calls this re-linking a religious task.Within this broad project, emphasis is placed on Irigaray's insistence that in order for sexual difference to be our redemption, women need to attend to creating a spiritual world appropriate to our own natural world. Indispensable to this project is the cultivation of a genealogy of mother-daughter relationships. This thesis explores this theme in Irigaray by discussing Drucilla Cornell's book, 'Legacies of dignity: between women and generations', as an Irigarayan genealogical exercise.This thesis also explores Irigaray's demand that western culture rethink its understanding of God. She suggests that we cultivate a sense of the divine as 'sensibly transcendent.' In order to highlight the distinction between Irigaray's divine and a monotheistic, transcendent God, this thesis turns to Patricia Huntington's article 'Contra Irigaray: the couple is not the middle term of the ethical whole.'The concluding chapter explores Irigaray's reworked notions of incarnation and salvation.Throughout these explorations, this thesis holds that Irigaray's re-integration of the natural and the spiritual will promote more ethical living -- with others, our selves, the earth and the divine.
    • An Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Seminars 1 and 2

      Olthuis, James H.; Martin, Noah; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2008-01)
      My thesis is an introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis--and assumes all of the connotations of the word "introduction". I have tried to make it as clear and simple as possible, constantly reiterating each point in hopes that the reader will find some sort of conceptual handle in which to gain access to Lacan's world. This thesis begins with an attempt to situate the Lacanian project in its historical and theoretical context. I proffer the contributing factors that led Lacan to initiate his Seminar followed by the theoretical tasks he wished to accomplish therein. I then transition into a discussion dealing with the underlying mechanisms of language that form Jacques Lacan's specific strand of psychoanalysis.With Lacan's understanding of the functioning of the signifier in place I shift into a topological discussion of the individual symbolic concepts crucial to an understanding of the nature of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Throughout this discussion I endeavor to show how the concepts interrelate and influence the formation of all the parts of the nascent amorphous theoretical whole; all the while drawing on examples from popular culture in order to illustrate these concepts to the non-specialized reader.In the third and final section of the thesis I discuss how these concepts are manifest in the psychoanalytic practice--the actually existing analytic session. I venture a guess at how these concepts effect the work of the analyst and the analysand in order to suggest an explanation of what the terminus of analysis looks like.
    • Natality From Chaos: Hannah Arendt and Democratic Education

      Zuidervaart, Lambert; Van Dyk, Tricia K.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2006-08)
      This thesis considers contemporary education from a philosophical angle via the work of Hannah Arendt in light of education's key place a the intersection of responsibility for the past, empowerment to effect change in the present, and hope for the future. Chapter 1 sets out an understanding of human community as a chaotic system in the technical sense via Arendt's concept of natality, applying this understanding to the project of education as a way of helping educators facilitate students' ability to contribute something new without controlling students' potentially unique contributions. Chapter 2 questions in more detail the applicability of some of Arendt's philosophical and political ideas to multicultural education, addressing also the need for setting goals for action without assuming a deterministic, mathematically linear process. Chapter 3 examines Arendt's firm distinction between education and politics in the context of globalization and the possibility of continual renewal and transformation of our world.
    • Teleology in the Thought of William of Ockham

      Sweetman, Robert; Zylstra, Stephen John; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2007-07)
      This thesis offers an account of William of Ockham's understanding of teleology in order to question the standard modernist history of the concept. Ockham does not rely on the Aristotelian analogy between art and nature to establish that all natural things seek an end. Nor does he simply relativize the analogy by considering all creatures as having their ends fixed by God. Instead, Ockham draws a sharp distinction between voluntary and natural agency, which results in two very different uses of final causality. On the one hand, the way in which final causes operate in voluntary agents cannot compromise their freedom. On the other hand, the way they operate in natural agents cannot explain their necessity. Ockham negotiates the radical difference between the causality of voluntary and natural agents by positing a new analogy altogether, comparing it to the difference between will and intellect.
    • Decomposing Modernity: Images of Human Existence in the Writings of Ernest Becker

      Olthuis, James H.; Martin, Stephen William; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1992-12)
    • Peter L. Berger's Theory of Sociology of Knowledge and Its Implications for His Understanding of Third World Society

      Marshall, Paul A.; Saher, Iskandar Kisman; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1992-10)
    • Being and Being Known: the Place of Revelation in a Marcelian Ontology

      Olthuis, James H.; Wells, Jeffrey; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1987)