ICS older Masters theses published before 2011.

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Recent Submissions

  • The Quest for Rational Agreement: a Critical Assessment of Alasdair MacIntyre's Attempt to Overcome Relativism

    Chaplin, Jonathan; Gassanov, Samir; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2003-02)
  • Karl Polanyi and the Social Embeddedness of Economic Life: a Critique of the rationality assumption in economics

    Marshall, Paul; Woods, David; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1987-08)
    Economic rationality refers to the efficient use of resources so as to satisfy human ends as fully as possible. Rationality, taken in this sense, has been a consistent and important theme in the history of economic thought. Only in this century however has rationality been explicitly formulated as a basic assumption of individual behaviour in economic theory. [Partial abstract taken from thesis]
  • The problem of evil in David Griffin's process theology

    Olthuis, James H.; Shahinian, Gary Richard; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1984-09)
  • Popper, Darwinism and Third World Evolutionary Epistemology: an Exposition and Critique

    Wolters, Albert M.; Roques, Mark Seymour; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1986)
  • Computers and Natural Language: Will They Find Happiness Together?

    Hart, Hendrik; Prall, James W.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1985)
  • The Politics of Jesus and the Power of Creation

    Ansell, Nicholas John; Parler, Branson L.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2005)
    This study examines the theology and social ethics of John Howard Yoder with a view toward how creation and redemption are related in his theology. The first chapter examines Yoder's aversion to certain construals of creation and argues that he is not inherently hostile to creation as such, but is cautious with respect to the possible abuse of creation as a theological and ethical category. The second chapter evaluates the nature of the state in Yoder's theology, examines his view of the Powers in this context, and argues that his view of redemption can be seen as a restoration of an eschatologically open creation. The third chapter compares Yoder's theology and social ethics with those of J. Richard Middleton, arguing that there may be a potential for interconnection between Yoder's Anabaptistic focus on the politics of Jesus and Middleton's Reformational emphasis upon the goodness of the power of creation seen in the imago Dei of Genesis I.
  • Bursting the Banks: Matthew's Use of Israel's Wisdom Tradition

    Keesmaat, Sylvia C.; VanManen, Richard P.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2008)
    One especially contentious issue for Matthew's predominantly Jewish-Christian audience is how to relate to Gentiles, who are also followers of Jesus and desire to be incorporated into their community. To address this issue, Matthew appeals to Israel's wisdom tradition, and particularly to the pilgrimage of Woman Wisdom. In this journey, Woman Wisdom is commanded to dwell in Israel. She makes her home there and calls all people to come to her for wisdom and life. Ultimately, Wisdom is rejected by Israel and she returns to God. This thesis proposes that it is this pilgrimage of Woman Wisdom that is an underlying metaphor for Matthew's gospel. Like Wisdom, Jesus arrives in Israel, calls Israel to follow him, and is ultimately rejected. Woman Wisdom's cry to come to her to receive life is echoed in Jesus' call for all to enter the kingdom of God. The inclusion of the Gentiles in the community therefore demonstrates the presence of the kingdom of God.
  • Conceiving the Miraculous: At the Limits of Deconstruction

    Olthuis, James H.; Moord, Lucas Martin; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2004)
    With a view to Jacques Derrida's rearticulation of Plato's khoral myth I consider the possibility of non-oppositional difference within a relational economy - a notion that Derrida seems quite resistant to. By framing a discussion in terms of Derrida's critical interaction with phenomenology, looking specifically to Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, I attempt to mark the context from which deconstruction emerges as a philosophical position. In a general sense, I deal with Derrida's conception of the relational space in-between persons, places and things, and the implications of his appropriation of khora for thinking about how we properly relate to one another.
  • Love's Circumscriptions - the self in hide(ing) - : Surviving and Reviving the Truth

    Olthuis, James H.; Leaman, Michele; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2005-11)
    I trace Jacques Derrida's notions of self and truth in Circumfession. This text paints a gruesome self-portrait depicting the inescapable violence of subjectivity. The self is born in blood. Derrida courageously confesses to being a casualty of this lovelessness. Similarly, exploring the depth of patriarchy's inscriptions requires facing the painful truth of my bleeding self. Investigating these wounds seems to reopen them, making me complicit in my own oppression. Drawing from the rich narrative of Ingeborg Bachmann's novel Malina, I allow feminists such as Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Drucilla Cornell and bell hooks to engage Derrida's notions of the wounded and wounding self. Beginning in this bloody place, they attempt to write a way-out of the disempowering systems of subjectivity to which the female self seems confined. They write in order that love will bleed some light on the struggle for empowered female subjectivity, re-writing the self as a space of love rather than violence.
  • Natural Healing In Biblical Perspective: It's Contribution to Health Care

    Olthuis, James H.; Lysander, Nesamoni; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1989-09)
  • Not Very Modern But Very Twentieth Century: An Interpretation Of Jose Ortega Y Gasset's Categories For Art Historiography

    Seerveld, Calvin; Luttikhuizen, Henry Martin; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1986)
  • In or After Eden? Creation, Fall, and Interpretation

    Olthuis, James H.; Smith, James K. A.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1995-08)
  • An Analysis and Evalutation of Cornelius Van Til's Doctrine of Common Grace

    Olthuis, James H.; Pavlischek, Keith J.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1984-11)
  • Why Should I Bleed? A Conversation With Louise Lander and Lara Owen About the Meaning(s) of Menstruation

    Walsh, Brian J.; Smith, Lisa J.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1995-11)
  • Towards an Integral Anthropology: An Examination of Donald Evans' Philosophy of Religion

    Olthuis, James H.; Wilson, Gordon P.; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1985-08)
  • Yes and No: Carl F.H. Henry and the Question of Empirical Verification

    Olthuis, James H.; Pearcey, John Richard; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 1987-08)
  • Excess, Sex & Elevation

    Zuidervaart, Lambert; Shuker, Ronald Kurt; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2006-01)
    Excess, Sex & Elevation is an attempt to understand the desire for truth in the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Nothing is said about what truth is, but rather why it is wanted and how it is sought. Despite their different religious beliefs (Levinas a Jew, Nietzsche an atheist, Dostoevsky a Christian), the three thinkers hold remarkably similar conceptions of truth. Truth is an individual pursuit -- upwards. The self experiences a crisis of conscience upon discovering its originary excess, which is sex. The self suffers spiritually for what it is physically through the art of ascesis, turning the lust for sex into the desire for truth. And therein begins the self's elevation to the heights of truth.
  • Metaphoric Truth: Seeing and Saying in Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur, and a Broader Ethics Via Zuidervaart

    Smick, Rebekah; Read, Janet; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2010)
    Artistic meaning via visual art and literary fiction is debated in modern aesthetic thought. Language is a cognitive component in postmodernist aesthetic projects. This thesis investigates Maurice Merleau-Ponty's and Paul Ricoeur's writings on painting and language, respectively, whose phenomenological aim is the revelation of being in works of the imagination in tandem with Lambert Zuidervaart's approach to artistic truth which opens the lifeworld to the biotic context of the earth. For him, imaginative disclosure is integral to techno-scientific and art realms. Embodiment, natality, and expression illuminate the problematic of meaning in forms of postmodern visual art. Metaphoric imagination and metaphor are used for metaphor is a principle of articulation, not a figure of speech. Aesthetic projects connect with the lifeworld in a hermeneutic circle of meaning.
  • Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs: a Contemporary Encounter With Contemplative Aspirations

    Sweetman, Robert; Mols, Michael John; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2007-08)
    Recent scholarship in biblical interpretation has remained suspicious of the "allegorical" approach to scripture, presumed as common to Medieval Christianity, and Bernard of Clairvaux is often acknowledged as paradigmatic of contemplative exegesis. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs is often alleged to be an ultimate example of the dangers of monastic "allegorizing," in that such an approach lacks any consistency of method and maintains an ideological stance that is suspicious of and ultimately rejects the nature of bodily existence. This thesis counters these claims by utilizing the work of contemporary medievalists, instead of contemporary biblical exegetes, as a lens in a close reading of Bernard's Sermones Super Cantica, as well as his textual interaction with Peter Abelard and Peter the Venerable. This thesis suggests that Bernard is consistent in his method of performative reading and holds bodily existence as vital to the monastic and broader Christian way of life.
  • Weil, Truth and Life: Simone Weil and Ancient Pedagogy As a Way of Life

    Sweetman, Robert; Mols, Yvana; Institute for Christian Studies (Institute for Christian Studies, 2007-07)
    Contemporary philosophers, wary of the vaulted metaphysical systems proposed by Enlightenment thinkers, have explored alternative avenues of doing philosophy. Unfortunately, these "new" philosophical systems often neglect their roots in ancient philosophical practice. The purpose of this thesis is to textually ascertain the ancient concept of philosophy as a way of life in the contemporary philosophical work of Simone Weil. This connection is demonstrated in two distinct yet related ways. The practical pedagogy demonstrated through biographical work and student lecture notes provide a distinct vision of her life's bent toward practical philosophy. In addition, her Notebooks, read in light of Pierre Hadot's interpretation of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, demonstrate the pervasiveness of this way of life in her personal textual engagement. In Weil, therefore, we find an important contemporary instance of continuing and reinterpreting the ancient philosophical practice where she finds her philosophical origin.

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