Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ

How do theologies of God's saving relation to humanity relate to social models of gifts and gift exchange? Building upon the cumulative (and conflicting) work of Marcel Mauss, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Luc Marion, the contemporary “Gift” discussion reconsiders the Christian doctrine of grace. Gift theologies seek to articulate a divine-human reciprocity that leads to an ecclesial-social reciprocity: That the church may love others as God loved them in Christ. As part of this constructive project, John Calvin's theology of grace has been repeatedly criticized (by John Milbank, Stephen Webb, etc.). Supposedly, Calvin prioritizes the divine partner in redemption, so that the human qua human is made into “nothing”; In this reading of Calvin, he systematically opposes the divine and the human, such that a participation of the human in the divine is made unthinkable.

I engage this systematic discussion by examining the development, scope, and metaphysics of Calvin's theology of “participation in Christ.” I argue that Calvin's theology of “participation” emerges from a soteriology which affirms a differentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption. Through his appropriation of biblical and Catholic sources (especially Irenaeus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria), Calvin develops a wide-ranging and emphatic doctrine of participation. In prayer, the sacraments, and obedience to the law, believers are incorporated into the Triune life. As believers are made one with Christ by faith, the Father is revealed as generous by his free pardon, and the Spirit empowers believers for lives of gratitude.

Thus, in contrast to the Gift discussion's assessments, I argue that Calvin's strong account of divine agency enables rather than undercuts human agency in sanctification. Grace fulfills rather than destroys nature, so that humans may “participate in God” as the telos of creation. In Calvin's theology of prayer and the sacraments, “participation in Christ” is inseparable from participation in loving relationships of social mutuality. Indeed, Calvin's concept of “participation in Christ” has considerable ethical and political consequences. Highlighting Calvin's doctrine of participation reframes the critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion and opens up new possibilities for ecumenical theology and Calvin scholarship as well.

Baptism, Bodies, and Bonds: The Rhetoric of Empire in Colossians

Although the letter of Colossians runs a mere four chapters, its exegetical, hermeneutical, and theological problems are many and complex. The authorship of the letter, its meaning and theology, and those to whom it is addressed are all widely debated. The many-membered body, which forms the subject of the undisputed Pauline letters, becomes in Colossians a spiritual-cosmic body with Christ as its undisputed head. Not only the corporate body but also the physical body is under discussion in the Colossian community. Abstinence from food and sex and even ownership and autonomy of the body are being contested. Despite what at first glance appears to be a cosmology shared by author and audience, the meaning and relevance of cosmic “powers,” “authorities,” “rulers,” and “lords,” as well as earthly ones, are negotiated. Yet does the Colossian author use this seemingly shared cosmology to reinforce or to challenge social relations in the

?

This dissertation investigates the understandings of baptism and

in Colossians in order to reconstruct the self-understanding and the symbolic universe of the community to whom the letter is addressed. It focuses on the competing post-baptismal understandings of status and authority inscribed in the letter, as well as the interpretations of the body, the practice of baptism, and the household/

. My thesis asserts that both the author of Colossians and the community to whom he writes, as colonized persons living in the Roman Empire and religious outsiders, needed constantly to negotiate for a position of favor within both the city and the Empire. In response to the tensions arising from the community members' lives as colonists and outsiders, the author of Colossians used baptismal motifs such as death and resurrection, the new humanity, and the unity of the body to model the ejkklhsiva on Roman imperial power relations and the patriarchal household of antiquity. This strategy might have constituted a direct response to those who saw themselves as akin to the democratic “private” religious associations, an organizational model which they shared with many early synagogues.

To Whom Has Wisdom's Root Been Revealed? Ben Sira and the Election of Israel

This study interprets the theme of election in the book of Sirach. A central problem in the interpretation of Sirach concerns the relation of wisdom and Torah. Many scholars interpret Ben Sira's correlation of the universal wisdom tradition with Israel's particular traditions of Torah as “identification.” Scholars understand this identification as either a nationalizing of wisdom or a universalizing of Torah. Both avenues of interpretation prove problematic, however, as either Torah or wisdom loses its distinctiveness. The problem is magnified when we consider that wisdom represents the teachings of the ancient Near Eastern sages. These were considered universally applicable to all human beings, whereas Torah denotes the particular teachings of Israel's God, which were intended for Jews alone.

In order to avoid the reductionism evident in scholarly interpretations of Sirach, the study suggests that Ben Sira views wisdom and Torah not as identical but rather as correlated. Using methods developed in scholarship on biblical Hebrew poetry, I interpret Ben Sira's use of parallelism and asyndetic juxtaposition not as tautological expressions but as meaningful correlations that take on significance in their literary, rhetorical, and socio-historical contexts. The study concludes that Ben Sira correlates universal wisdom and Israel's particular Torah through the idea of election. The sage characterizes Israel as a people chosen by yhwh for the purpose of receiving a special apportionment of wisdom, which he associates with the Torah. At the same time, all humanity also receives a general apportionment of wisdom that is available to them through creation. While Israel's election distinguishes her from the other nations, she nonetheless retains a close affinity with the nations through their common creation from the dust of the earth. In this sense, Ben Sira cannot be construed as a dualist, as many scholars maintain. Moreover, Israel's performance of the ethical and ritual commandments of the Torah renews and sustains the primeval order and thereby benefits universal humankind.

The Humanity of Christ in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics

This study detects a remarkable description of Jesus Christ's humanity and human agency within Barth's Church Dogmatics. Using textual analysis and systematic argumentation, and setting Barth in conversation with various theologians and philosophers, my analysis proceeds in five steps. First, I contend that in the first volume of the Church Dogmatics, Barth launches a christological program of a decidedly idiosyncratic character. This program integrates exegetical and dogmatic reflection, maintains a sharp distinction between Christ's divinity and humanity, foregrounds dithelitism (

“two” and

“will,” the doctrine that Christ has two wills, divine and human), construes Christ's humanity as “flesh” under judgment, and views Christ's struggle in Gethsemane as pivotal for the event of reconciliation. Second, I identify the doctrine of election as foundational for Barth's Christology. On one level, election means divine self-determination. The elective assumption of humanity by God has a profound ontological consequence: it transforms the divine life. On another level, though the Son qua “electing God” constitutes the subject of Christ's person, God's patience ensures the genuineness of Christ's human being and human agency. The doctrines of incarnation, covenant, and reconciliation therefore intersect: God's self-determination as the Logos incarnatus goes hand-in-hand with Jesus'living as God's creaturely partner, predestined to play a human role in the salvation of the world. Third, I examine Barth's Christology in relation to sanctification. I suggest that Barth's treatment of post-Reformation scholastic terminology—especially different permutations of the communicatio idiomatum—refines his presentation of Jesus' human agency. I also propose that the terms “wholeheartedness, sovereignty, love, and deliverance” help one to appreciate Barth's description of Jesus' human “correspondence” (Entsprechung) to God. Fourth, the study examines Barth's Christology in relation to justification. Going beyond the scholarly preoccupation with Barth's comments on intra-triune obedience, I show that obedience (Gehorsam) functions as a christological category with divine and human registers. Barth views Christ's agony in Gethsemane as strikingly illustrative of his human obedience. It forms a crucial moment in Jesus' history in which he humanly reckons with and then resolves to absorb—and therefore enact—God's punishment for sin. Finally, paying particular attention to Barth's construal of punishment, I experiment with the ethical and political dimensions of my reading of his Christology.

Transforming the Seat of the Goddess into Viṣ

u's Place: The Complex Layering of Theologies in the Karavīra Māhātmya

This is a study of a medieval Sanskrit text called the Karavīra Māhātmya “Greatness of Karavīra” and how it constructs the greatness of Kolhapur, a small city located in southern Maharashtra. Home to the Hindu goddess Śrī Mahālakṣmī and her co-deities Śrī Mahākālī and Śrī Mahāsarasvatī, Kolhapur is a major śākta pīṭha “Seat of the Goddess” in the sacred geography of Maharashtra. Rather than adopting the Śākta “Goddess-centered” theological perspective implied in this configuration, however, the Karavīra Māhātmya text incorporates themes and motifs from the Vaiṣ

ava “Viṣ

u-centered,” Śaiva “Śiva-centered,” and Śākta theological traditions. In doing so, it creates a multivalent theological construction of the city's mythistory with precedence given to the Vaiṣ

ava perspective.

The approach adopted in this dissertation considers the Karavīra Māhātmya the product of a thoughtful and erudite author. Instead of deconstructing the text, this analysis examines the narrative flow and its resonances within the wider purā

ic “old tales” tradition to which it belongs.

Following the narrative structure of the Karavīra Māhātmya, the analysis begins with a consideration of the three frame stories that trace its narrative genealogy. Next, it considers how the city is the duplication of Kāśī (Benares, the “City of Light”) with its strong Śaiva ethos. The following chapter considers the Vaiṣ

ava ethos that comes to the forefront in a story about Parāśara, who performs tapas “ascetic practice”in Prayāga in order to convince Viṣ

u to grant him a son, Vyāsa, who will transmit Vedic learning in the Kali Yuga “Age.” Lastly, the analysis takes up the third and final move of the narrative: the reinterpretation of the Śākta theological vision of the temple as the masculine Trimūrti “triune Godhead.” Reminiscent of the threefold narrative structure in the DevīMāhātmya “Greatness of the Goddess,” the members of the Trimūrti defeat the family of Kolāsura in Gayākṣetra. This conflict culminates in a battle between the goddess Śrī Mahālakṣmī and the demon Kolāsura, ending with an iconographic pose evoking Mahiṣāsuramardinī “the Slayer of Mahiṣāsura” and giving the city its modern name: Kolhapur.

By reading the Karavīra Māhātmya as a sustained narrative grounded in a threefold structure, the power of the multivalent vision adds layer upon layer of symbolism and meaning to Kolhapur. This enhances Kolhapur's claim to be a place more sacred than Kāśī itself. c.e.

Executing Justice in Sunni Islam: Historical, Poetical, Eschatological and Legal Dimensions of Punishment under the Saljuqs (1055–1194 c.e.)

This dissertation studies the theory and practice of punishment in medieval Islam in the context of Saljuq society in Iraq and Persia during the fifth century a.h./eleventh century c.e. and the sixth century a.h./twelfth century c.e. Punishment, which for the purpose of this study I define as the use of legitimate force in order to inflict a penalty in retribution for an offence, arguably functions as a key factor in the organization of society. By studying the ways in which Saljuq society punished and disciplined its members, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the fabric of medieval Islamic culture and society. The multigenre approach adopted in this study results in a synchronic, rather than a diachronic, analysis. I consider three perspectives on punishment: part one examines Saljuq chronicles, courtly advice literature, and poetry both in Arabic and Persian; part two offers an interpretation of “popular” eschatological traditions about hell and the punishments suffered therein; part three reconstructs the jurists' discourse on punishment.

First, public punishment served the Saljuq ruling class as a political tactic to demonstrate and to reinforce their claims to power and to just government. This ideology of siyasa “politicalexpediency” propagated by courtly panegyrics, mirrors for princes, and the public spectacle of punishment, however, failed to achieve hegemony over the minds of people. Second, popular traditions about hell show a close conceptual contiguity between punishment in this world and in the next. As this study argues, the eschatological idiom offered the possibility for ordinary people to come to grips with the existential discomfort that state punishment occasioned and the possibility to find creative responses to a living situation often marked by unbearable insecurity. Third, the jurists, especially those of the Hanafi school, argued against analogical and linguistic extensions of punishments in order to reduce the scope of criminal law. In the field of discretionary punishment (ta

zir), they put forth the claim that only offences committed in public were punishable. These three parts support the basic argument of this dissertation that both eschatologists and jurists skillfully managed Islamic cultural resources to formulate conceptions of justice that could compete with the kind of justice administered by the ruling classes. Thus they carved out a space for individual liberty under a highly militarized and unstable political régime.

Catholic Social Thought, Regional Economic Integration, and Immigration Policy: Reconstructing Catholic Social Thinking Regarding the Right to Freedom of Movement

This thesis discusses how modern Catholic social thought (CST) might incorporate the reality of regional economic integration, exemplified by accords like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), into its thinking regarding immigration policy. The writers of Catholic Social Teachings (CST) are members of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, including members of specific departments such as “Migration and Refugee Services,” as well as individual bishops and popes. CST's writing on the ethics of immigration policies tries to be responsive to transnational interdependence. CST acknowledges the relationship between interdependence and increased transnational migration but does not provide comprehensive guidance as to how the relationship between the right to emigrate and obligations to receive immigrants ought to be politically structured. This thesis proposes to help CST expand the guidance that it can give regarding the structuring of transnational rights to migrate and the obligations to receive migrants. In dialogue with liberal thinking, furthermore, it suggests that CST can understand regional integration agreements, such as NAFTA, as giving rise to those rights and obligations.

This study queries the works of several thinkers who have written on this topic. First, I analyze the writings of CST in the “Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People” from Rome, in certain statements of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, and in statements written in the name of Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II. In these writings CST understands the right to migrate as a geographic right of public access to goods. Second, I examine the writing of Michael Walzer on the concept of membership in light of his more recent work and statements. Walzer provides hints as to how non-citizens can end up being de facto incorporated into another country's political community. Subsequently, I evaluate the arguments for a robust global right to freedom of movement put forth by Joseph Carens. Although these arguments are judged unsuccessful, Carens's focus on basic social institutions offers clues as to how CST might think about interdependence. These clues, with the help of Thomas W. Pogge's institutional conception of human rights, in which rights are understood as claims on institutional orders, are incorporated into CST's thinking. This incorporation gives CST a framework for understanding how and when regional integration agreements can lead to special rights to migrate across borders and corresponding obligations to receive migrants. The implications of this framework for state policy are briefly illustrated by examining transnational worker provisions under NAFTA and an immigration reform bill recently sponsored in the U.S. Senate.

Envisioning Heaven with Faith, Imagination, and Historical Relevance: Selected Writings from Early and Medieval Christianity

Literary descriptions of Heaven constitute a still undervalued collection, which requires more systematic study. The authors, faith-driven and richly imaginative, engaged dynamically with the world, which they viewed from the perspective of their ultimate goal. This dissertation offers newinsights into each author's particular religiosity and each one's era. I also reexamine the development of the collective corpus of visionary writings, which were prominent in Western Christianity. Chapter 2 covers the main aspects of the New Testament and three visions written in its wake: The Ascension of Isaiah, The Passion of Perpetua, and The Apocalypse of Paul. Chapter 3 examines The City of God (Augustine) and The Celestial Hierarchy (Pseudo-Dionysius). Ensuing segments focus more extensively on medieval writings: Chapter 4 discusses The Vision of Wetti (Abbot Heito, Walahfrid Strabo) and The Theological Confession (Jean of Fécamp); Chapter 5 examines On Loving God (Bernard of Clairvaux); and Chapter 6 examines Dante's Paradiso.

The analytical method that I designed encompasses theological, literary, and historical perspectives. For each featured text, I examine four aspects: The depiction of God; the ways in which human identity and the environment are eternalized; the most valued rewards; and Heaven's organization, which encompasses hierarchy alongside the issue of who is saved and how many are saved. Each writing intricately configures these various aspects. To exemplify the collective variety, visions oriented toward Christ vary compellingly—one sees Perpetua's affectionate shepherd, Wetti's authoritative King, Jean of Fécamp's Savior/Judge, Bernard's romantic Groom, and Dante's crucified hero and ineffable Second Person. Each vision's distinctive perception of heaven's deity shapes a multifaceted sense of human experience. That eternalized experience resolves, within afterlife ideality, complex and often contentious issues, which include the following: The divine/human relationship; the essence of identity, involving the soul and its resurrected body; the conflict between concepts of union with the divine and rewarding fellowship among the blessed; and the salvation issue, pervaded as it is by doctrinal matters involving predestination, grace, free will, judgment, justice, and mercy. Overall, my study synthesizes synchronic and diachronic perspectives. I demonstrate the existence of an enduring tradition that also generated considerable innovation from century to century in the context of changing historical and cultural circumstances.

Divinity, Sexual Difference, and Democracy: A Critical Materialist Reading of Luce Irigaray's Politics of Incarnation

This dissertation critically evaluates the thought of French philosopher Luce Irigaray for its capacity to support a global radical democratic ethos. Irigaray proposes a politics of incarnation and love that aspires to heal Western, “masculine,” imperialist, metaphysical dualism by linking becoming divine with an ethics of sexual difference as the basis of the practice of democracy. She argues that the difference between men and women, rooted in universal sexuate morphology, is primary and prototypical for other social differences. All social contestation stems from a flawed relation between nature and culture. To guarantee an identity for all, Irigaray proposes legal civil rights and duties appropriate to male and female. Men and women “become divine” through the practice of horizontal transcendence toward each other, and their mutual civility, rather than a radical egalitarian ethos and politics, has the capacity to found a respectful “culture of difference.”

Luce Irigaray is a materialist, so I bring a materialist lens to bear on her work—particularly that of the often overlooked French radical materialists, and the intersectional theory of Patricia Hill Collins, Nira Yuval-Davis, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Kumari Jayawardena, Sudesh Vaid and Kumkum Sangari, Partha Chatterjee, and R. Radhakrishnan. I argue that Irigaray's project cannot yield the egalitarian democracy that she desires because it remains Eurocentric. Futhermore, it reifies the categories of gender and heterosexuality and does not adequately take account of other significant intersecting social differences and their distinctive causes. It cannot theorize historical interpretive agency and the internal diversity of religious traditions; it invokes an Orientalist feminine spiritual India as “lifeline” to the allegedly masculine rational West; and finally, it restricts the horizon of the divine. I demonstrate that feminist philosophers such as Ellen Armour and Grace Jantzen who rely on Irigaray import these theoretical problems. Only a global, materialist, intersectional approach can adequately explain and confront empire and enable us to rethink “the one and the many” in politically and spiritually liberating ways.

I construe materialist critical negation and mystical theoria as a coincident vision and practice of personal and social transformation, in which active unknowing of received reality in its violent divisions opens upon both encounter with the divine and the work of radical justice. To support this radical democratic mystic-materialist practice, I turn to a critical hermeneutics of liberation and the metaphysics of interconnectedness and struggle proposed by spiritual activists in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (ed. Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, and Transforming Feminist Practice, by Leela Fernandes. These material-spiritual models are more comprehensive than Irigaray's politics of incarnation for linking divinity, difference, and democracy.

Lifted Up From the Earth: The Ascension of Jesus and the Heavenly Ascents of Early Christians

Many Early Christians used Jesus' ascension to reflect upon their own heavenly ascents. Scholars of Jesus' ascension have often neglected this link, overemphasizing both the role of Luke-Acts in the development of ascension belief and the connection of Jesus' ascension with his resurrection.

In the ancient Mediterranean world, certain humans, gods, and other beings were claimed to ascend to heaven. The interpretation of their ascents (and their descents, in some cases) requires attention to anthropology and cosmology without premature demythologization of ancient worldviews.

Depending on theological and social contexts, Jesus' ascension could be narrated many ways. Early Christians' beliefs and hopes about their own ascents took several forms: “Mystical” ascents-and-descents, posthumous permanent ascents, and permanent ascents before earthly death. As shown by the three texts studied briefly (Hebrews, Ephesians, and Irenaeus's Adversus Haereses) and the three works discussed below, their ascents were frequently interlinked with Jesus' ascension.

In the Apocryphon of James, permanent ascent is desired by Jesus and all generations of disciples, but it can only occur after the students become teachers. Ascent-and-descent is an unsuccessful attempt at permanent ascent. The text grants high status to Jesus as the crucified one and the inaugural teacher who ascends gloriously. Jesus is also vulnerable, however, for his ascent depends on his students' prowess.

In the Ascension of Isaiah, Jesus' ascent, in the context of his descent-and-ascent, makes Christians' ascents possible. Isaiah's ascent-and-descent shows the true cosmic hierarchy beyond the masquerades that endanger their salvation. The posthumous permanent ascents of Isaiah and other righteous humans exemplify the believers' goal of exceeding the angels' glory and beholding God.

The Gospel of John, with its complex resurrection theology, holds in tension two timings for Jesus' ascension: after his resurrection and at his crucifixion. The crucifixion-ascension is Jesus' hour of triumphant salvation, concluding with the gift of the Spirit. Christians, born again “from above” in baptism, are as if in a state of permanent ascent. Moreover, believers facing death under persecution are called to follow Jesus in his death and ascent.

In each instance, the conceptualization of Jesus' ascension provided Early Christians with a framework for understanding the cause and significance of their own ascents.

Finding Our Place in the Past: Genealogy and Ethnicity in Islam

It has been argued that Islam is unique among the world's religious traditions for the diversity of peoples who have embraced it as members of a single, worldwide Muslim community. This study contributes to studies of conversion to Islam by reflecting on one strategy, that of genealogical representation, for presenting Islam as a universal faith to non-Arab Muslims. Specifically, it considers how classical Muslim scholars promoted early Persians' assimilation into Islam by depicting them as descendants of Muslim prophets such as Noah or Isaac.

The study investigates genealogies in works of adab (belles-lettres) and of universal history that were written during the conversion of Iran in the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. The sources were chosen for the ample evidence of literary context that they provide and for their pointed attention to the Persians' ancestry. They reveal Persian and Arab scholars' efforts to show the antiquity of Persians' connections to the true monotheism (islām) that God revealed to prophets before Muhammad, and thus, that Islam was a religion as Persian as it was Arab in origin.

The first two chapters draw on writings by Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276 a.h./889 c.e.), Ibn

Abd Rabbih (d. 328 a.h./940 c.e.), and al-Mas

ūdī (d. 345 a.h./956 c.e.). The chapters document the Persians' concerns to envision their place in Islam vis-à-vis Arabs, the conflicts that arose as Persians remade themselves as descendants of prophets, and a few attempts to determine what to do with Iran's mythic indigenous ancestors. These chapters highlight the poetic boasting of “Shu

ūbī” littérateurs who sought to show that Arabs occupied a comparatively unexceptional place in Islam's salvation history. The third and fourth chapters look closely at attempts by the historians Abū Ḥanīfah al-Dīnawarī (d. c. 281 a.h./894–895 c.e.) and al-Ṭ711;abarī (d. 310 a.h./923 c.e.) to rework indigenous Persian genealogies in order to give Persian figures new genealogies and new roles in salvation history.

The Story of David's Rise as Political Apology: A Reconsideration

Modern biblical scholars have increasingly characterized the story of David's rise to kingship as stemming from an originally independent and unified source that was composed in the Jerusalemite royal court for the purpose of legitimizing David's usurpation of Saul's throne. Scholars have made this case for interpreting “the History of David's Rise” (HDR) as royal propaganda through comparisons of it with other ancient Near Eastern royal texts, particularly the Hittite “Apology of

attušili.” Furthermore, they have detected in HDR a rhetorical posture that addresses several underlying or implied charges of illegitimacy and lèse-majestéagainst the historical David. Inasmuch as these scholars believe that the original HDR remained essentially unchanged throughout its literary history, they interpret the biblical account in terms of the apologetic needs of King David.

In this dissertation, I contend that these recent characterizations of HDR as “the Apology of David” fail to make adequate sense of many literary and theological features and particularities of the biblical account. My contention is not that the story of David's rise to kingship was never used for any sort of “apologetic” purposes, but that the biblical account—at any point in its literary history—cannot be so easily assimilated to the genre of ancient Near Eastern “royal apology” and basically reduced to “political self-justification” or “secular, political ideology,” as some scholars have characterized it. Ultimately, this approach leads to unsatisfactory results even for versions of HDR that have been reconstructed according to these historical and literary assumptions. Reading through the lens of political apology is all the more inadequate, then, vis-à-vis the present biblical account.

Within the biblical context of 1 and 2 Samuel, I argue, yhwh's initial election of David is not simply one of several legitimizing themes or motifs in “David's story.” Divine election, rather, is the sole ground upon which David's kingship rises and stands. Subsequent to yhwh's initial election of David as his king, therefore, the rest of the narrative presents yhwh's confirmation of him as his choice for king through the emergence of David as the “beloved son” of Jesse, Saul, all Israel, and yhwh himself.

John Dewey and the Dynamics of Moral Faith: An Assessment and Reconstruction

In his small but significant book, A Common Faith (1934), John Dewey differentiates between a naturally occurring sense of “the religious” and institutional “religion.” Whereas “the religious” refers to a pervasive and shared quality of experience, “religion” refers to a discreet kind of experience believed to be sui generis and supernatural in character. Dewey critiques institutional religion on metaphysical and ethical grounds. He argues that even socially-minded, liberal forms of religion are problematic insofar that their doctrinal objects of faith are logically inconsistent with their professed acts of faith.

While this critique may be sound on logical grounds, it overlooks the possibility that institutional, prophetic acts of faith may actually deepen and transform experience in “religious” ways. In this dissertation, I develop Dewey's concept of the moral acts of faith in a manner that bridges the purported divide between “religion” and “the religious.” I do so in three basic steps.

First, I establish that the moral act of faith (henceforth, “moral faith”) is for Dewey a dynamic and relatively autonomous force that has aesthetic and ethical significance. This is especially true when viewed in light of Dewey's metaphysics and psychology. Next, I argue that Dewey unfortunately never develops an adequate social account of the dynamics of moral faith. Rather, he retreats to a logic-based critique of religion's supernatural objects of faith. To help broaden Dewey's view, I draw on aspects of Dewey's own philosophy that are found largely outside of A Common Faith—namely, his aesthetics, social ethics, and theory of education. Using these resources, I reconstruct a plausible Deweyan lens that is sympathetic to ritual. Lastly, I apply this reconstructed hermeneutic to an actual set of ritual practices—the Good Friday liturgies at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas. I argue that these multilayered, institutional rituals educate participants in a way that deepens a communal sense of moral faith. Overall, this study sheds significant light on theintegral relation between the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of moral faith, both in theory and in practice.

Innovation or Deviation: Exploring the Boundaries of Islamic Devotional Law

How did medieval Muslim jurists deal with popular devotional practices that lacked an explicit source in the Qur

ān and Hadith? Most contemporary scholars—both Western and Muslim—assume that jurists uniformly rejected all innovations (bida‘; sing., bid‘ah) in devotional law (‘ibādāt). They explain the dynamism and diversity within Muslim devotional life by distinguishing between a normative Islam and a popular Islam. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature that challenges the normative/popular dichotomy by demonstrating that jurists did not express uniform opinions in their own writings about innovations. Instead, jurists debated the permissibility of devotional innovations throughout the 5th–10th centuries a.h./11th–16th centuries c.e.

The study first explores the debates found primarily in the jurists' kutub al-bida‘ “treatises against innovations” literature. By analyzing not only how they defined bid‘ah but how they used bid‘ah to assess acts, the study reveals two distinctive approaches. Jurists, such as the Ḥanbalī, Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 a.h./1328 c.e.) and the Mālikī, Ibrahīm al-Shāṭībī (d. 790 a.h./1388 c.e.), used bid‘ah as a normative statement against any devotional act without a prophetic precedent and thus rejected all devotional innovations. By contrast, Shāfi‘ī jurists, such as ‘Izz al-Dīn b. ‘Abd al-Salām (d. 600 a.h./1262 c.e.), Abū Shāmah (d. 665 a.h./1268 c.e.), and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911 a.h./1505 c.e.), used bid‘ah also as a descriptive statement, which means an act that arose after Muhammad's time. They then determined the act's legal status on the basis of its content, purpose, and agreement with existing legal rules.

The study then examines two case studies of popular devotional innovations: the Prophet's birthday festival (mawlid al-nabī) and the prayer of desirable gifts (ṣalāt al-raghā'ib). The case studies show that juristic proponents used the category of bid‘ah ḥāsanah “good innovation” to permit these practices. Moreover, each case study refines our understanding of the legal criteria that jurists used to assess devotional innovations. Juristic proponents looked both to the piety of the practice and to analogies from Muhammad's practices and teachings. That is, these jurists stretched the Prophet's sunnah to incorporate new devotional practices. The debate over devotional innovations thus reveals a subtle difference among juristic conceptions of the boundaries of devotional law.

A Mediating Way of Thinking: Rhetoric, Gender, and Religion in the American Pragmatist Tradition

This dissertation addresses the topic of pragmatism and feminism through an analysis of the intersecting themes of rhetoric, gender, and religion in the pragmatist tradition. Many explanations for the current pragmatist renaissance situate pragmatism as an alternative to and way of moderating between existing theoretical positions. This presentation of pragmatism as a via media can be identified and explored with attention to gender and religion in both classical and contemporary manifestations of the pragmatist tradition. The first chapter surveys contemporary varieties of pragmatism and controversies over its interpretation, and outlines the method and context of the dissertation. Chapter 2 undertakes a genealogy of the term pragmatism and its contested meanings and narratives, arguing for a pluralistic, heterogeneous understanding of the pragmatist tradition as composed not only of multiple narratives but also competing interests and claims. The third chapter explores William James's presentation of pragmatism with attention to cultural context and his views on women and gender in order to understand how pragmatism comes to be constructed as a gendered rhetoric of mediation. James constructs pragmatism as a female-gendered mediator between opposing commitments and attitudes of philosophy, religion, and science on the one hand, and between contemporaneous ideals of the gendered self on the other. The fourth chapter focuses on Richard Rorty's version of neopragmatism and its rhetoric of neutrality and consensus. Rorty's analysis of what pragmatism can contribute to feminism is grounded in a gendered separation of public and private, which establishes strict boundaries regarding the role of religion in liberal democratic societies. He offers pragmatism to feminists as a neutral set of theoretical tools that can be deployed as needed while feminists are engaged in political struggle. In contemporary feminist theory and theology, some forms of pragmatism inherit this “strong” Rortian pragmatism and function as a gendered rhetoric of consensus and convergence that minimizes difference and claims neutrality. The dissertation concludes with a call for further critical feminist analysis of the pragmatist tradition and of the forms of pragmatism that are being advocated as a resource for feminist theory and practice.