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Exploration of the Easter kerygma reveals the cognitive content of earliest form of post-Easter resurrection faith to be belief in an angelomorphic transformation - the belief that Jesus had been transformed post-mortem into a exalted mediatorial figure who who was Son of God, Lord and Messiah. The conceptual background is that of action proceeding in parallel in heaven and on earth. The Son of Man was not Jesus, but Jesus' heavenly alter ego, Michael-Melchizedek. Under the pressure of threatening external events and eschatological anticipation the always permeable boundary between Jesus and the Son of Man and Jesus own conception of his own identity suffered progressive collapse. Jesus therefore began to speak of his own anticipated suffering and hoped-for vindication in Danielic terms. Thus some at least of the 'suffering' Son of Man sayings may be reflecting underlying sayings in which Jesus spoke as the Son of Man of the Son of Man. Whilst the driving force in the emergence of post-Easter faith was congnitive dissonance, Jesus own understanding of himself as identified with and acting in concert with the heavenly being Michael-Melchizedek may have been communicated to at least some of his followers and may have been reflected in confirmatory visionary experiences during his lifetime. The experience known as the Transfiguration may therefore be the point of origin during Jesus lifetime of the whole edifice of resurrection faith.

Through close textual analysis of 20th century Czech anthropological texts from the Revivalist and Socialist periods and contemporary social research conducted after the Velvet Revolution, I demonstrate certain prominent discourses of identity developed in early Bohemian anthropology and their continuities in present day popular discourses. In each period, identity is deeply intertwined with teleological theories of history with Czech populations at the apex of cultural evolutionary development. In the Revivalist period this apex was believed to be the democratic nation state, transitioning to a Marxist nation state in the Socialist period, and in the contemporary period is conceived of as a neoliberal nation state. A major function of anthropology in the Revivalist and Socialist periods was to legitimate either period’s respective teleological theory and Czech possession of relevant values as 'objective' and 'natural' fact, a general mode of discourse which continued in the contemporary period in numerous editorials in the 1990s on the advantages of capitalism. The contemporary manifestation has particularly noteworthy consequences for the Roma minority, which I argue has provided Czech discourses with an ethnic category 'anti-thetical' to their own identity, providing a 'repository' for negative Czech self-stereotypes emerging from collaboration in the Socialist period.

This thesis aims to provide a critique of the conclusions of Gershom Scholem regarding the potential for ‘Gnostic’-Kabbalistic filiation, and to establish whether, in light of the available evidence, Scholem’s arguments (which have yet, to my mind, to be sufficiently challenged) can be reasonably supported. I strive to offer an arguably clearer definition of the relevant taxonomic terms than is often presented in scholarly analyses of this question, whilst also arguing for the applicability to this debate of certain pertinent methodological approaches drawn from the wider school of comparative mythology. As such, I also attempt to establish a clear methodology for judging the probability of the genetic descent of one ‘system’ from another, viz. that perhaps the most logical method for assessing potential similarities between different ‘systems’ is to assume in the first instance that all correspondences identified are essentially coincidental, dismissing this assumption only if one can identify a high level of exactness in these comparisons (such as would render pure coincidence relatively improbable) and/or establish a secure chain of transmission between two sources, a chain which renders the transmission of ideas not only possible but indeed probable. Applying this methodology to certain potential routes by which second century ‘Gnostic’ thought might have been transmitted to the origin point of the medieval Kabbalah, I attempt both to demonstrate the wider applicability of such a methodology beyond the narrow question of ‘Gnostic’-Kabbalistic relationships, and to illustrate the serious difficulties with advancing any of these potential routes as a reliable source for the transmission of ‘Gnostic’ ideas to the Kabbalah. Rather, I argue that it may be more logically defensible, in the absence of clear source evidence, to ascribe such correspondences as are located purely to coincidence, albeit a coincidence perhaps somewhat tempered by certain observations regarding the relative ubiquity of certain concepts and modes of thought.

This dissertation fundamentally explores the nature of change, and the development interventions that aim to bring this change into a particular society. What emerges is the notion of a ‘spiral’: imagining the dynamic relationship between paradigms and discourses, the institutions and programmes operating in a place, and the way individual identities are constructed in intricate and contradictory ways. Within this spiral, discourse has power – ‘words matter’ – but equally significant is how these words interact dialogically with concrete social structures and institutions – ‘it takes more than changing words to change the world’. Furthermore, these changes are reacted to, and expressed in, the physical, sexed body. In essence, change is ideational, institutional, and embodied. To investigate the politics of change, this dissertation analyses the spiral relationships between gender discourses, institutions, and identities in contemporary Indonesia, focusing on their transmission across Java. It does so by exploring the Indonesian state’s gender policies in the context of globalisation, democratisation, and decentralisation. In this way, the lens of gender allows us to analyse the dynamic interactions between state and society, between ideas and institutions, which impact on everything from cultural structures to physical bodies. Research focuses on the gender policies of the Indonesian Ministry of Women’s Empowerment, substantiated with case study material from United Nations Population Fund reproductive health programmes in West Java. Employing a multi-level, multi-vocal theoretical framework, the thesis analyses gender discourses and relational structures (how discourses circulate to construct the Indonesian woman), gender institutions and social structures (how discourses are translated into programmes), and gender identities and embodied structures (how discourses enter the home and the body). Critically, studying gender requires analysing the human body as the site of both structural and symbolic power. This dissertation thus argues for renewed emphasis on a ‘politics of the body’, recognising that bodies are the material foundations from which gender discourses derive their naturalising power and hence ability to structure social relations. The danger of forgetting this politics of the body is that it allows for slippage between ‘gender’ and ‘women’; policy objectives cannot be disentangled from the reality of physical bodies and their social construction. This thesis therefore argues that there are distinct and even inverse impacts of gender policies in Indonesia. As the ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’ assumptions of gender equality are overlaid onto the patriarchal culture of a society undergoing transformation, women’s bodies and women’s sexuality are always and ever the focus of the social gaze. The gender policies and interventions affecting change on discursive and institutional levels may thus provoke reaction at the level of individual identities that are contrary to explicit intentions. In effect, projects that purport to work on ‘gender’ are often so deeply rooted in underlying gender normativity that their net effect is to reinscribe these gender hierarchies. By exposing the contradictions in these underlying paradigms we gain insight into the politics of a transforming society. Furthermore, engaging with the politics of the body allows us to analyse the spiral processes between discourse and practice, the question of power, and the way men and women embody social structures and experience social transformation.

Can the issue of how important it is whether or not there is a God be decided prior to deciding whether ot not there is a God? In this paper, I explore some difficulties that stand in the way of answering this question in the affirmative and some of the implications of these difficulties for that part of the Philosophy of Religion which concerns itself with assessing arguments for and against the existence of God, the implications for how its importance may best be defended within secular academe.

This thesis deals with the determinants and mechanisms of individual secularisation processes in a cross-national perspective. In this ‘collected volume’ of six stand-alone articles, I examine religious beliefs and behaviours as well as attitudes towards religion and politics, whereby the validity of the main theories of religious change (classical secularisation theory, existential security hypothesis, supply-side explanations, historical/cultural approaches and conflict theories) are put to an empirical test. The main conclusion is that the fundamental mechanisms suggested by secularisation theories are valid and that we can identify main determinants of religiosity worldwide. However, only a combination of existing approaches is capable of explaining a broad range of the phenomena observed. Chapter 1 (co-authored with Nan Dirk de Graaf and Peter Schmidt) deals with the fundamental mechanisms that facilitate the socialisation of religious beliefs. Under conditions of high inequality, religion acts as a source of social capital that benefits the religious socialisation of individuals outside of the family context. If levels of inequality fall, this ‘social value of religion’ is diminished and religious socialisation depends more strongly on parental efforts, thereby gradually leading to intergenerational secularisation. In Chapter 2 (co-authored with Anja Neundorf) we show that the state in Eastern Europe played a crucial role in de-establishing as well as re-establishing religious plausibility structures, which explains lower levels of religious belief in Cold War cohorts as well as the religious revival after the end of the Cold War. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the topic of religion and politics and the mechanisms behind the support for the 9/11 attacks in the Muslim world. Levels of existential security and income inequality have a strong impact on the preferences for religious politicians in a cross-sectional as well as in a longitudinal perspective. Moreover, religiosity and altruistic behaviour run the risk of being converted into pro-terrorist support under conditions of high levels of inequality and low development levels. The final two chapters show that –in a world-wide comparison development levels, inequality and the Socialist history of countries explain 75% of the variation in religiosity between countries. Furthermore, future developments in religious change will also be subject to changes in fertility. The main drivers of secularisation processes can be identified, but for the majority of the world population these conditions are not met at present, nor will they be met in the near future.

The aim of the present chapter is to challenge conceptions of a divine ideal against which human subjects measure their ethical points of view. I locate my own position at the interface of debates concerning the positioning of a first-person human subject in relation to a third-person divine ideal in Anglo-American philosophy of religion and Continental feminist philosophy. My critical point of departure is Luce Irigaray’s feminist challenge to what she sees to be a masculine conception of God; her alternative is for women to become divine (Irigaray L, Divine women. In: Gill GC (trans.) Sexes and genealogies. Columbia University Press, New York, pp 57–72, 1993; Irigaray L, La Mysterique’. Divine women. When the Gods are born. In: Joy M, O’Grady K, Poxon JL (eds) French feminists on religion: a reader. Routledge, London, 2002), or for ‘a divine in the feminine’ (Irigaray L Towards a divine in the feminine. In: Howie G (ed) Women and the divine: transcendence in contemporary feminism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. pp forthcoming, 2007). Irigaray’s provocative accounts of divinity are having a profound impact on feminist philosophers and certain theologians. The poetic or, some would say, slippery style of Irigaray’s French psycholinguistics finds expression in sexually differentiated conceptions of the divine, including accounts of ‘divine women,’ and of becoming divine as women and as men (Jantzen GM, Becoming divine: towards a feminist philosophy of religion. Manchester University Press, Manchester,1998; Martin A, Luce Irigaray and the question of the divine. Maney Publishing, Leeds, 2000).

This thesis explores how the Rapture fiction and popular prophecy of modern American premillennial dispensationalism shapes the eschatological beliefs of its readership. This will be accomplished through a text-based critical analysis of the anxiety narratives of the Bible study and exegetical guides of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library, and its counterpart, the Left Behind fiction series. This thesis represents the first scholarly analysis of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library, and the first situation of Left Behind fiction within its theological context. It will be proposed that these two sets of texts shape the eschatological beliefs of their readers through a discursive ‘streamlining’ that is performed in several ways. Firstly, the historical development of the movement will be examined, exploring the evolution of a specific premillennial dispensationalist hermeneutic and its ‘channelling’ through particular cultural institutions. Secondly, an analysis of the Tim LaHaye Prophecy Library and Left Behind fiction will demonstrate that this premillennial dispensationalist hermeneutic is almost exclusively communicated through anxiety narratives which focus on expressions of horror, isolation, powerlessness and paranoia. It will be argued that these narratives serve to explore ‘abjective’ elements of premillennial dispensationalist belief, re-integrating them into the fabric of the faith. Particular attention will be paid to these abjective elements, which include the role of the eschatological body, the nature of individual salvation, and the perpetual deferment of the Rapture. As such, the popular media of premillennial dispensationalism serves as a further channel for the discursive streamlining of the movement’s prophetic scheme. Finally, this thesis proposes that the ‘deprivation’ theory of millennial appeal does not adequately explain the appeal and success of premillennial dispensationalism. As such, the following analysis will suggest that an alternate critical analysis of the movement, concentrating on its tropes of anxiety, serves to better explain the continued appeal of this ideology.

I took it that the definitions Swinburne quotes imply that all of a person's basic beliefs are (privately) rational; Swinburne demurs. It still seems to me that these definitions have this consequence. Let me briefly explain why. According to Swinburne, a person's evidence consists of his basic beliefs, weighted by his confidence in them. So presumably we are to think of S's evidence as the set of the beliefs he takes in the basic way, together with a sort of index indicating, for each of those beliefs, his degree of confidence in that belief. Now it is clear, first, that different basic beliefs can be held with different degrees of confidence. I believe 2+1 = 3 more firmly than there are presently some large trees in my backyard, and I believe that second proposition more firmly than I played bridge last night. Nevertheless, I believe all three propositions; I don't just believe them probably. So, the set of my basic beliefs contains propositions, all of which I believe. Further, a belief of mine is ‘rendered (evidentially) probable by [my] evidence’, I take it, just if it is probable with respect to the set of my basic beliefs. But of course probability of 1 with respect to that set; the degree of confidence with which I hold those beliefs does not seem to be relevant. Hence my conclusion that on these definitions all of my basic beliefs are rational.Swinburne points out that some of my basic beliefs may be improbable with respect to the rest of my basic beliefs; these beliefs, then, might be thought irrational, at least if they are not held as firmly as those with respect to which they are improbable. But this seems to me an uninteresting sense of ‘irrational’. Many of my basic beliefs are improbable with respect to my other basic beliefs; they are none the worse for that. I now remember, as it seems to me, that in the second bridge hand last night I was dealt three aces, three jacks, and three deuces. This is unlikely on the rest of my basic beliefs. It is, nonetheless, not irrational in any useful sense; memory is an important and independent source of rational belief, a source such that its deliverances do not necessarily depend, for warrant or rationality, on their probability with respect to other basic beliefs. I believe the same goes for some of my Christian beliefs. They may be improbable with respect to other beliefs, basic or otherwise, that I hold; but that need be nothing whatever against them.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how uninstitutionalised female preachers, or dāʿiyāt, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia construct authority in a context in which male ulama dominate the production of religious knowledge and represent the apex of the religious and social hierarchy. The study was broad, descriptive, and explanatory and drew primarily on the framework known as ‘accountable ethnography’. Data collection occurred between June and December 2009 and consisted of observations, interviews, and collection of literary artefacts, which were reviewed alongside literature published internationally. A flexible mode of inquiry was employed, partly in response to constraints on public religious discourse imposed in Saudi Arabia after September 11, 2001. The study concludes that the dāʿiyāt construct authority predominantly by relying on male ulama as marjiʿiyya diniyya (religious frame of reference) when issuing fatwas, as pedagogical models, as sources of charismatic inspiration, and as providers of personal recommendations. The dissertation also addresses a set of ‘alternate’ strategies of authority construction employed by Dr Fāṭima Nasiīf. Almost uniquely, this dāʿiyā is found to construct authority that goes beyond reproduction of institutionalised views by developing scholarly arguments to support interpretations of Islamic texts that are responsive to women’s perspectives and needs. In doing so, she expands the parameters of religiously permissible practice while remaining, for her part, within the confines of orthodox practice. Thus, although her society and most researchers perceive knowledge as a masculine attribute in the Saudi religious sphere, in matters relating to women, as well as through active leadership in ritual practice, Dr Fāṭima demonstrates that the dāʿiya can become the authority. Nevertheless, for her and for the other dāʿiyāt, the study finds that legitimatising female religious authority depends upon maintaining the established social order, including the hierarchy that places women in a subordinate position to men.

The claim that religious belief is delusional is evaluated using a current cognitive neuropsychiatric model of delusion formation and maintenance. This model explains delusions in terms of the conjunction of two cognitive deficits - the first a neuropsychological deficit giving rise to an anomalous perceptual experience, the second a deficit in the machinery of belief evaluation. It is argued that to provide an account of religious beliefs as delusional within this model, two requirements must be met: 1. Plausible candidates for the first factor must be put forward; and 2. There must exist individuals with aberrant religious perceptions who do not develop deluded beliefs about those experiences. With regard to requirement 1, a range of "neurotheological" research is reviewed. The second stated requirement is addressed via consideration of "mystic atheists" - individuals who have had mystical experiences yet have not adopted religious beliefs as a result. A variety of problematic issues for the above account are tackled. It is concluded that insight into the motivational basis for religious beliefs, when combined with OCCAM's principle of scientific parsimony, allows a plausible case to be made for religious belief as delusional, provided that a particular construal of belief pathology is adopted.

Horrendous evils pose distinctive challenges for belief in an ethically perfect God. To home in on these challenges, I construct an ethical framework for theodicy by sketching four cases of human action where horrors are either caused, permitted, or risked, either for pure benefit (i.e., a benefit that does not avert a still greater harm) or for harm avoidance.I then bring the framework and the moral valuations confirmed by this casuistry to bear on the project of theodicy. I construct four analogous structures – one for each case – and identify examples of each structure in theodicies in contemporary philosophy of religion. I summarize each theodicy and evaluate whether it is structurally promising with respect to horrendous evils. That is, if the proposed interconnected set of facts and reasons were true, would God be ethically in the clear?My initial conclusions impugn the dominant structural approach of depicting God as causing or permitting horrors in individual lives for the sake of some merely pure benefit. This approach is insensitive to relevant asymmetries in the justificatory demands made by horrendous and non-horrendous evil and in the justificatory work done by averting harm and bestowing pure benefit.I next argue that the structurally promising theodicies I have identified are implausible due to their overestimation of the extent to which finite human agents can bear primary responsibility for horrendous evils and their underestimation of the importance for theodicy of being consonant with a broadly Darwinian approach to evolutionary theory. The project of theodicy is in trouble.The second half of my thesis develops an approach to theodicy that falls outside my proffered taxonomy. Following a suggestion of Leibniz, Robert Adams has argued that theodicy can be aided by the insight that almost all of the evil of the actual world is metaphysically necessary for the community of actual world inhabitants to be comprised of the specific individuals who comprise it. Beginning with this insight, I develop (what I term) Non-Identity Theodicy. It suggests that God allows the evil he does in order to create and love the specific individuals comprising the community of inhabitants of the actual world. This approach to theodicy is unique because the justifying good recommended is neither harm-aversion nor pure benefit. It is not a good that betters the lives of individual human persons (for they wouldn’t exist otherwise), but it is the individual human persons themselves.In order to aim successfully at the creation of particular individuals, however, God would need a control of history so complete that it might be argued to be inconsistent with beliefs about human free will that are important to some theologies. I construct a second version of Non-Identity Theodicy designed to avoid this problem by considering whether God’s justifying motivation for allowing the evil of this world could be his aiming for beings of our type, even if it could not be his aiming for particular individuals. I suggest that God would be interested in loving those he creates under various descriptions (e.g., biological, psychological, and narrative descriptions), and argue that a horror-prone environment is necessary for us to be the type of being we are under each of the descriptions.I assess the structural promise and plausibility of Non-Identity Theodicy. In order to do so, I engage with Derek Parfit’s non-identity problem and with some influential assumptions in the ethics of procreation literature. I end by recapping what I take to be the key areas of overemphasis and under-emphasis in contemporary theodicy.

This essay urges contemporary philosophers of religion to rethink the role that Kant’s critical philosophy has played both in establishing the analytic nature of modern philosophy and in developing a critique of reason’s drive for the unconditioned. In particular, the essay demonstrates the contribution that Kant and other modern rationalists such as Spinoza can still make today to our rational striving in and for truth. This demonstration focuses on a recent group of analytic philosophers of religion who have labelled their own work ‘analytic theology’ and have generated new debates, including new arguments about Kant bridging philosophy and theology. Cultivation of a reflective critical openness is encouraged here; this is a practice for checking reason’s overly ambitious claims about God.

This thesis examines political engagement amongst young urban Chinese Protestants. Based on 100 interviews in Beijing and Shenzhen, 50 with Protestants, and 50 with non-Protestants, it focuses on three areas: national narratives (what individuals think about China, its current situation and its future direction), political opinions, and social and political activity. I firstly argue that Protestants generally adhere to a relatively ‘critical’ national narrative, one that is more divergent from the Party-state’s nationalist discourse than that of their demographic peers. I then argue that in causal terms, it is primarily individuals who hold these critical values who are most drawn to Christianity, rather than developing the values as a result of their faith. Secondly, Protestants do not just hold more negative opinions of China's political regime, but that the criteria by which they judge it are different. In contrast to their demographic peers, Protestants do not base their judgements of the regime on its performance at delivering on everyday political issues. Thirdly, Protestantism catalyses the development of a sense of agency in its adherents: a sense of moral responsibility towards China and a desire to bring change through transformative activism. However, factors in China's cultural, historical, social and political context serve to steer Protestants' activism away from engagement with secular society and inward towards the church community. I conclude by arguing that Protestantism poses two challenges to China's Party-state: Firstly, it is symptomatic of an underlying sense of social and political malaise, of scepticism towards the primacy of economic enrichment and towards the Party-state’s attempt to legitimise its rule based upon this. Secondly, Protestantism catalyses the emergence of a critical, morally agentic individualism that anchors its worldview in a discourse outside the control of the Party-state. Adapting to these social shifts presents a major future challenge for the CCP.

This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenröthe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heißt Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heißt Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.

This study explores the rediscovery and development of a tradition of Ciceronian academic scepticism in British philosophy between c.1660-c.1760. It considers this tradition alongside two others, recently recovered by scholars, which were recognised by contemporaries to offer opposing visions of man, God and the origins of society: the Augustinian-Epicurean, and the neo-Stoic. It presents John Locke, Conyers Middleton and David Hume as the leading figures in the revival of the tradition of academic scepticism. It considers their works in relation to those of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and Bernard Mandeville, whose writings refashioned respectively the neo-Stoic and Augustinian-Epicurean traditions in influential ways. These five individuals explicitly identified themselves with these late Hellenistic philosophical traditions, and sought to contest and redefine conventional estimations of their meaning and significance. This thesis recovers this debate, which illuminates our understanding of the development of the ‘science of man’ in Britain. Cicero was a central figure in Locke’s attempt to explain, against Hobbes, the origins of society and moral consensus independent of political authority. Locke was a theorist of societies, religious and civil. He provided a naturalistic explanation of moral motivation and sociability which, drawing heavily from Cicero, emphasised the importance of men’s concern for the opinions of others. Locke set this within a Christian divine teleology. It was Locke’s theologically-grounded treatment of moral obligation, and his attack on Stoic moral philosophy, that led to Shaftesbury’s attempt to vindicate Stoicism. This was met by Mandeville’s profoundly Epicurean response. The consequences of the neo-Epicurean and neo-Stoic traditions for Christianity were explored by Middleton, who argued that only academic scepticism was consistent with Christian belief. Hume explored the relationship between morality and religion with continual reference to Cicero. He did so, in contrast to Locke or Middleton, to banish entirely moral theology from philosophy.

This thesis presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire: although specific parts of the Dictionnaire have received much scholarly attention, the work has hardly been studied as a whole, and little is known about how the Dictionnaire was influenced by Bayle’s polemic with Jurieu. This thesis aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire, under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological-political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire. The title of this thesis comes from Herman Melville’s novel: ‘Pierre, or the Ambiguities’.

In On Liberty, Mill says that ‘the same causes which make … [a person] a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin’. Despite Mill's not having drawn it out, there is an argument implicit in his comments that is germane to both externalist and internalist understandings of the epistemic justification of religious beliefs, even though some of these understandings would not wish to use the term ‘epistemic justification’ to refer to whatever it is that they suggest must be added to true belief for it to count as knowledge. In this paper, we shall articulate this argument; examine how it challenges those religious believers who would wish to claim their religious beliefs as knowledge; and consider what they may do to meet this challenge.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.

This study traces the development of Tibetan ‘treasure’ texts and practices in contemporary times via the life-story and scriptural revelations of the Tibetan ‘treasure revealer’ (gter ston) Kun bzang bde chen gling pa (1928-2006). It examines how his revelations (gter ma) rooted in the historic spirituality of Tibet, continue and adapt into the twenty first century. The study is important in order to understand the ways this Asian religious concept develops and coalesces in North America. With the dramatic advances in communication through digital technology, it examines how gter ma texts and practices reach a modern audience. Also discussed are the implications of centuries old debates surrounding Buddhist lineage, transmission and ‘authenticity’ as well as concepts such as liberty, equality and authority. All of which are culture-specific constructions that differ radically when seen from a variety of perspectives. The main conclusion drawn from this research is that as a Western Vajrayāna ‘tradition’ emerges and intersects with older Tibetan forms, both must attempt to find a middle path between their differing applications and interpretations if they are to avoid drifting into an arena of extensive commercialisation, dilution and distortion.

This article argues that theism entails a species of pantheism on the grounds that there is simply no discernible difference between the God's knowledge of the world and the world that God knows. The case against this thesis begins with the traditional theory of distinctions. But since God is necessarily omniscient there is not even the possibility that these might be considered apart and thus distinguished in that way. But neither is it possible to do this by means of Leibnitz's law, that is, by finding some feature possessed by the one but not the other. Three potential areas of difference are considered but rejected, first, that knowledge unlike the world is representational, and second, that knowledge unlike the world is phenomenal – there is something that it is like to have. Both of these features, though able to distinguish ordinary knowledge from its objects, cease to provide the difference we require when extended to the case of divine knowledge. A final area of potential difference lies in the transcendent nature of God over the world, especially with respect to time, finitude and possibility. But this, in the end, is found no more able to distinguish God's knowledge from its object than the previous two suggestions.

The nature of trials, tests, and temptation in the Epistle of James has been extensively debated in New Testament scholarship. However, scholarship has underexamined the tension between the author’s mitigation of divine agency in testing ( Jas 1:13–14) and the author’s appeal to well-known biblical testing narratives such as the creation account (1:15– 18), the Binding of Isaac ( Jas 2:21–24), and the Trials of Job ( Jas 5:9–11). This juxtaposition between the author’s theological apologetic and his biblical hermeneutic has the potential to reveal either the author’s theological incoherence or his rhetorical and hermeneutical creativity. With these tensions of divine agency and biblical interpretation in mind, this dissertation compares the Epistle of James against other examples of ancient Jewish interpretation, interrogating two points of contact in each Jewish work: their portrayals of the cosmic drama of testing, and their resulting biblical hermeneutic. The dissertation assembles a spectrum of positions on how the divine, satanic, and human roles of testing vary from author to author. These variations of the dramatis personae of the cosmic drama exercise a direct influence on the reception and interpretation of the biblical testing narratives. When the Epistle of James is examined in a similar light, it reveals a cosmic drama especially dependent on the metaphor of the divine law court. Within this cosmic drama, God stands as righteous judge, and in the place of divine prosecutor stand the cosmic forces indicting both divine integrity and human religious loyalty. These cosmic and human roles have a direct impact on James’ reading of biblical testing narratives. Utilising an intra-canonical hermeneutic similar to that found in Rewritten Bible literature, the Epistle appeals to a constructed ‘Jobraham’ narrative in which the Job stories mitigate divine agency in biblical trials such as those of Abraham, and Abraham’s celebrated patience rehabilitates Job’s rebellious response to trial. In conclusion, by closely examining the broader exegetical discourses of ancient Judaism, this project sheds new light on how the Epistle of James responds to theological tensions within its religious community through a hermeneutical application of the dominant biblical narratives of Job’s cosmic framework and Abraham’s human perfection.

Juan Luis Segundo (1925-1996) was a Uruguayan Jesuit priest who, I argue, based his liberation theology on his understanding of existentialism. The major contribution of this thesis is the exploration of unknown and unexplored sources in Segundo's work. These sources support my thesis of his basis in existentialism and are corroborated by his mature theology. This thesis is significant because the connection between existentialism and liberation theology has been widely overlooked. My starting point is Segundo's 1948 book, in which he combines existentialism with personalism and develops a transcendental method grounded in love and inter-subjectivity. The following three chapters develop my argument through his engagement with four existentialist thinkers: Berdyaev, Sartre and Camus, and Heidegger. Chapter 3 demonstrates how Segundo follows Berdyaev's primacy of freedom, which allows for human creativity, but Segundo takes it as a "quality of the will" and relates freedom to love. Berdyaev influences Segundo's preference for a methodology yielding consistent growth rather than a systematic approach to theology. Chapter 4 shows how Sartre's and Camus' understanding of freedom and limits influenced Segundo's sense that a person's lived reality must be the starting point for theological reflection (e.g. the hermeneutic circle). In chapter 5, I use an unpublished manuscript to show how Segundo uses the place of tradition in the Christian church and the role of tradition in Heidegger's phenomenological analysis of Dasein in order to build his theology of "liberative human seeking and divine revelation". In the final two chapters, I draw the new sources together with two of Segundo's widely read books: Faith and Ideologies (1982) in chapter 6 and The Liberation of Theology (1975) in chapter 7. In chapter 6, the transcendental method he first wrote about in 1948 returns and he addresses materialism and personalism. Chapter 7 serves as my conclusion and uses Segundo's hermeneutic circle as the fullest manifestation of my argument.

Joseph Butler's moral thought and the ethical rationalism of Samuel Clarke, and his followers, John Balguy and Richard Price, are frequently distinguished, as a result of: (a) Butler’s empirical method (e.g., Kydd, Sturgeon); (b) Butler's emphasis upon self-love in the 'cool hour passage' (e.g., Prichard, McPherson); (c) Butlerian conscience, where, on a neo-Kantian reading, Butler surpassed the Clarkeans by conveying a sense of Kantian 'reflective endorsement' (e.g., Korsgaard, Darwall). The neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans in (c) are consistent with (d) Francis Hutcheson's and David Hume's criticisms of the Clarkeans; (e) modern criticisms of rational intuitionism that follow Hutcheson and Hume (e.g., Mackie, Warnock); and (f) the contention that the Clarkeans occupied an uneasy position within 'post-restoration natural law theory' (e.g., Beiser, Finnis). (d)-(e) thus underpin the distinction between Butler and the Clarkeans in (a)-(c), where the Clarkeans, unlike Butler, are criticised for representing moral truth as the passive, and self-evident, perception of potentially uninteresting facts. This study responds to (a)-(f), by arguing that Butlerian and Clarkean conscience possessed more than one referent; so that conscience meant an individual's experience of his own judgement and God’s judgement and the rational moral order. As a result of their shared theory of conscience, Butler and the Clarkeans held the same theory of moral development: moral agents mature as they move from obeying conscience according to only one of conscience's referents, to obeying conscience because to do so is to satisfy each of conscience's referents. In response to (a)-(b), this study demonstrates that the Clarkeans agreed with Butler’s method and 'cool hour': natural considerations of individual judgement and self-interest were necessary aspects of the progress towards moral maturity in both Butler and the Clarkeans. With respect to (c), it is argued that Butler and the Clarkeans shared the same understanding of practical moral reasoning as part of their shared understanding of conscience and moral development. This study places limits upon proto-Kantian readings of Butler, and neo-Kantian criticisms of the Clarkeans, while making it inconsistent to divide Butler and the Clarkeans on the basis of Butlerian conscience. In answer to (c)-(f), Clarkean conscience shows that the Clarkeans were neither complacent nor ‘externalists’. Clarkean conscience highlights how the Clarkeans positioned themselves within the tradition of Ciceronian right reason and Thomistic natural law. Consequently, in both Butler and the Clarkeans, the intuition of moral truth was not the passive perception of an 'independent realm' of normative fact, but the active encounter, in conscience, with reason qua the law of God’s nature, human nature, and the created universe.

This thesis presents descriptive and explanatory accounts of both non-theism, the lack of belief in the existence of supernatural agents, and strong atheism, the moral opposition to such beliefs on the grounds that they are both harmful and signs of weak character. Based on my fieldwork with non-theist groups and individuals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Denmark, an online survey of over 3,000 non-theists from over 50 countries, and theories from both the social and cognitive sciences, I offer a new account of why nations with low economic and normative threats produce high levels of non-theism. This account is offered in place of the common explanation that religious beliefs provide comfort in threatening circumstances, which I show to be both anthropologically and psychologically problematic. My account centres on the role of threats, both existential and normative, in increasing commitment to ingroup ideologies, many of which are religious, and the important role of witnessing displays of commitment to religious beliefs in producing such beliefs in each new generation. In environments with low levels of personal and normative threat, commitment to religious ideologies decreases, extrinsic reasons for religious participation decrease, and superstitious actions decrease. Given the human tendency to believe the communications of others to the extent that they are backed up by action, such a decrease in displays of commitment to religious beliefs leads to increased non-theism in the span of a generation. In relation to strong atheism, I document a correlation, both geographical and chronological, between strong atheism and the presence of religious beliefs and demands in the public sphere. I then offer an explanation of this correlation based on the effects of threats against a modern normative order characterized by philosopher Charles Taylor as a system of mutual benefit and individual liberty.

This essay was prompted by the question of how Hathayoga, literally 'the Yoga of force', acquired its name. Many Indian and Western scholars have understood the 'force' of Hathayoga to refer to the effort required to practice it. Inherent in this understanding is the assumption that Hathayoga techniques such as praṇayama (breath control) are strenuous and may even cause pain. Others eschew the notion of force altogether and favor the so-called 'esoteric' definition of Hathayoga (i.e, the union of the sun (ha) and moon (ṭha) in the body). This essay examines these interpretations in light of definitions of hathayoga and the adverbial uses of hatha (i.e, hathat, hathena) in Sanskrit Yoga texts that predate the fifteenth-century Hathapradipika.

The question I address is: how might a theology of authority be conceived in the light of questions raised by what is termed 'post-modernity'? Is it possible to articulate a theology of authority coming to the church community 'from God' that avoids an oppressive and alienating heteronomy? The thesis explores the question of authority as of vital importance in the sociological dimension of religion, calling for legitimisation (in light of claims made for itself) and as obligatory in the theological sphere. For this reason the project involves two methodologies (theological and sociological/ethnographic). While this investigation is relevant to all sections of the Christian church, particular attention is paid to Baptist churches in the UK, since they hold a concept in their tradition that I suggest is valuable in answering the question of the thesis, namely that of covenant. Within the Christian tradition there is an inner 'problematic' relating the personal authority of Christ to the forms of institution (church) and text (scripture). I explore this with a brief survey of theological authority as found in the fourfold foundation of scripture, tradition, reason and experience. From this is developed a brief theological and Christological reflection on divine authority and covenant theology as found in Karl Barth and his response to the 'inner problematic'. Within contemporary culture I view authority through the lens of so-called 'postmodernism', identifying four challenges to the notion of 'external authority' (all of which exemplify a move from the external to internal, and objective to subjective approaches to authority). This is further explored by means of qualitative research with one-to-one interviews conducted in a Baptist church in York. This data is reflected upon by means of ethnography and 'judicious narratives', especially in dialogue with material from Guest ('congregational study'), Heelas and Woodhead ('subjectivised-self') and Healy ('theodramatic horizon' and 'practical-prophetic ecclesiology'), providing an intersection between the language of theology and sociology. The concept of church as covenant community is explored in Baptist and (more briefly) Anglican traditions, leading to a constructive proposal that both the inner-church 'problematic' and the 'postmodern' challenge to authority might begin to be resolved with the notion of covenant. It is within this context of relationship, human and divine, that the authoritative and revelatory Word of God, the story that is Christ, is found in community and praxis. Here is a 'triangulating' relationship between authority, story and covenant revealing divine authority in a non-coercive way and relevant to contemporary culture.