Department of Theology and Philosophy

The Second Vatican Council’s recovery of the Catholic Church’s commitment to its missionary vocation towards the world places upon the succeeding generations of Roman Catholics the responsibility to implement this vision.  The vision exhorts the Catholic faithful to identify with the marginalized and to transform unjust structures by means of the renewal of the individual who is reconciled with God and others in Christ.  However, the implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s vision for evangelization is hindered by ideological differences which have severed the interdependence between the transformation of the individual and of dehumanizing structures called by the council’s vision.  The cause of this disjunction lays in the theological crisis precipitated by the twentieth century theological shift that embraced historical consciousness, and in particular modern forms of biblical interpretation.  The aim of this thesis is to determine a model for biblical interpretation that, by reconciling this division, can assist in the application of the total Second Vatican Council’s vision of evangelization.

This thesis-project aims to address the ministerial concern of how the integration of digital technology shapes Christian religious education and its ability to promote evangelization at St. Thomas Aquinas High School (STA) in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Framed by Richard Osmer's four tasks of practical theological interpretation, this project conducted a student survey and a theology faculty focus group to investigate how the integration of digital technology in Christian religious education is inspiring and compelling students to live their pastoral vocation to build the Reign of God. The results from the student survey reported that few students see the importance of using digital technology to make God present to others and that digital technology is having a minimal influence in their religious formation. Similarly, the results of the focus group pointed to how the theology faculty noted four challenges in integrating digital technology into Christian religious education. Additionally, the interpretive and normative tasks raised concerns over how an unreflected integration of digital technology inhibits the efforts of Christian religious education to evangelize. Accordingly, this thesis-project proposes a series of workshops to familiarize the theology faculty with reflective practices and pedagogical methods that formally attend to the integration of digital technology into Christian religious education at STA which promote evangelization.

Biblical hmh is an expression of displeasure that has the potential to precipitate punitive acts of violence. Though hmh is ascribed to both man and God in the Bible, its syntactic behavior differs depending on whether it is used to describe man’s anger or the anger of God.  When hmh describes human anger, its context highlights the experience of being aggrieved.  By contrast, when hmh describes divine anger, its context emphasizes God’s reprisal.  We suggest that the distinctive focus of divine hmh on the consequences of provocation instead of on God’s own experience of anger reflects a biblical struggle to reconcile the anthropomorphic idea of an emotional God with that of an omnipotent and invulnerable deity.  We begin by discussing human hmh, and our observations about human hmh serve as the backdrop against which we examine divine hmh.

Psalms Scroll 11QPsa (=11Q5) is the largest of all extant Psalms manuscripts found at Qumran.  It is made up of forty-nine compositions, seven of which are not found in the MT collection. While four of these extra compositions are attested elsewhere in ancient literature, three are unique to 11QPsa . They are known as Plea for Deliverance, Apostrophe to Zion and Hymn to the Creator. In this paper, we argue that the composer of Hymn to the Creator copies the structure of a biblical hymn and cites biblical hymnic verses. However, he reworks his biblical source material in a way that eliminates a theological motif present in the biblical contexts of the passages he cites. Through omission, source substitution, and re-contextualization, the composer of Hymn to the Creator eliminates all traces of the biblical portrait of an animate nature. Vitality applies only to God and his angels.

Although the Hebrew Bible preserves a strong tradition of aniconism, many verses speak of or imply Yahweh's anthropoid form. For example, throughout the Bible Yahweh's theophanic re is associated with anthropomorphic representations of him possessing a body and/or interacting physically with humans. Israel's old poetry and prophetic literature portray divine re as Yahweh's breath, mouth, and tongue. The Bible's narrative texts portray Yahweh using re as a means to eat, transport, travel, speak, and see, similar to how humans use their mouths, arms, legs, and eyes. Therefore, while Yahweh's re does not constitute the entirety of his self, like the human body, it is a means by which he interacts physically with the corporeal world.

Modern cognitive psychology is a useful tool with which to study biblical
hate, but it is only partially instructive. Since cognition is embedded in
culture, we cannot assume that modern conceptions and experiences of
this emotion wholly underlie its biblical depiction. Instead, biblical hate
(and, in fact, biblical emotions more broadly) must be explored on its own terms. The prototype emotion script approach, derived from the field of cognitive linguistics, offers a means to do this. A study of the sequence of traits that characterizes biblical hate reveals
a number of discernible hate scripts. This prototypical hate script offers a conceptually generic, culturally dependent, and rationally organized representation of biblical hate that allows us to understand further, for example, why Joseph’s brothers feel what they feel and do what they do.

The command to love God in Deuteronomy 6:5 poses a puzzle. The verse demands love, but does not explain how to achieve it. Comparing Deuteronomy's covenant structure to other ancient Near Eastern covenant treaties, modern scholars conclude that Deuteronomy 6:5 charges Israel to perform acts of love. And yet, scholars also suggest that God's passionate love for Israel demands a reciprocal emotional response from them. In attempts to elucidate Deuteronomy's command, both the rabbis of the first few centuries of the Common Era and the Gospels single out specific actions that constitute loving God. However, the sources diverge with regard to which actions they highlight. Significantly, Deuteronomy, the early rabbis, and the Gospels all hint that God's own love for His people is the model of love toward which devotees should aspire.