Doctorate Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13057/6

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Challenging history and telling herstory: an interdisciplinary exploration of the intersection of claims for equality and women’s lived experiences of officership in The Salvation Army in Australia.
(2023) Faragher, Christine
The Salvation Army began with a seemingly clear commitment to the equality of women and men in ministry, however, this narrative is contradicted by women’s lived experience of officership. A significant gap exists between the ideal and the real. This thesis explores the contours of the gap, revealing its historical, theological, cultural, and practical origins. Utilising a feminist hermeneutic of suspicion, it challenges the dominant historical narrative regarding Catherine Mumford-Booth and her written defences of women’s preaching and ministry roles. In doing so, it recovers a more grounded and life-giving image of this important historical figure. Its empirical work also allows the voices of contemporary Australian women officers to be heard, revealing the ways in which gendered inequality has been manifested and experienced in their ministry lives. It suggests theological resources for moving towards reimagined gender relations within the movement and the closure of the gap.
Cyprian of Carthage and the Australian Anglican Episcopate.
(2021) Hopkins, Luke
Hopkins' thesis brings the theological weight and pragmatism of third century bishop and martyr Cyprian of Carthage to bear on the problems facing the contemporary Anglican episcopate in Australia. ln doing so, it examines the vision of episcopacy within the Cyprianic corpus and as well as the development of the Anglican episcopate over the last five hundred years. lt is argued that Cyprian's vision of episcopacy provides an adaptive approach to episcopacy that retains certain core episcopal principals. This thesis concludes that a better examination of Cyprian is of value for bishops in the twenty-first century.
Early Christian Readings of Paul on Moral Regeneration
(2022) Rowse, Paul
Since God judges everyone according to their deeds, Paul regards the cultivation of moral conduct as a crucial task. Responding to the scholarly deadlock on whether believers’ ethical capacities are themselves regenerated or simply overlaid with divine power and otherwise unchanged, we engage with Romans 6:1-14 and its direct citations up to the death of Origen, where direct citations are identified by an attribution signal and literality. We ask whether moral regeneration is present in the early readings of Romans 6:1-14. Irenaeus’ three citations argue for the unity of Christ, the salvageability of the flesh, and a distinction between fleshly deeds and the flesh itself. Understanding the Spirit as formative of those whom he indwells, Irenaeus cites Romans 6:4 in order to demonstrate believers’ moral regeneration if they continue in the Spirit. Clement of Alexandria’s four citations are proof-texts against the Basilideans and the Valentinians. Clement’s Apostle signals believers’ exoneration for involuntary misdeeds because he says that they are “under grace”. Tertullian adapts two extended citations to his sympathetic audience in order to argue for the salvageability of the flesh and for the exclusion of recidivist baptized adulterers from the Church. Tertullian’s Apostle expects that all wrongdoing comes to an end with baptism. Origen adopts a voluntarist hermeneutic in his Commentary on Romans against opponents who promoted moral determinism. Thus, we find his strong witness to personal responsibility for moral action. His Commentary also contains his deduction from Romans 6:12 that the desires of the Spirit overlay the desires of sin, which believers still have. Origen’s other works contain proof-texts from our passage which display symbolic readings of “sin” and moral degeneration in recidivists; these too mainly make the case for personal responsibility. Thus, Clement, Tertullian, and Origen witness to perspectival renewal, and Irenaeus and Origen also to moral regeneration.
Eschatology and Individual Responsibility in Old English Literature
(2017-09) Toso, Fotini
This thesis is a study of the eschatological issues that were of fundamental concern to Anglo-Saxon writers. Exploring these issues enabled the writers to not only understand eschatological ideas but also to conceptualise the responsibility of and emphasise the need for every individual to prepare actively for Judgement Day.
Franciscan Liturgy and Identities: The Codex Sancti Paschalis and Networks of Manuscript Production in Umbria, 1280-1350
(2011-05-12) Welch, Anna
This dissertation analyses manuscript production networks operating in late-thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century Umbria. It focuses on liturgical Franciscan manuscripts decorated by the ateliers of the Maestro di Deruta-Salerno (active c. 1280) and Maestro Venturella di Pietro (active c. 1317), including the Codex Sancti Paschalis (now owned by the Australian Province of the Order of Friars Minor, and kept in the State Library of Victoria). This micro-history of Franciscan liturgical activity reassesses methodologies pertinent to manuscript production networks and aims to stimulate reflection on both the construction of communal identity through ritual activity and historiographic trends regarding this process.
Give Them Churches
(2022) McKinley, Diana
In 1836 Sir Richard Bourke’s Church Act was passed in NSW. It provided for the three major denominations to receive minister’s stipends and building grants for churches and minister’s dwellings on a subsidized basis. Victoria passed similar legislation in 1853, which provided £30,000 to be shared by all Christian denominations. Despite vigorous opposition from voluntarist churches, the grant was later increased to £50,000. This was written into the Victorian Constitution. Bourke’s Act brought equality to Australian churches and enabled magnificent, stately churches to be constructed. Society was changed as colonists formed new communities sharing their faith and socializing together. It also stimulated a desire for the education of their children. The Victorian government paid over £1million pounds sterling to Victorian churches which subsidized the building of over 544 churches in Victoria. The Church Acts enabled Christianity to be established in the new Colony of Victoria. It was repealed in 1970.
Good Priest, Virtuous Woman: Thérèse of Lisieux and Non-Heroic Sanctity in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century French Literature
(2019) Alleaume-Ross, Kathleen
This thesis argues that the person of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) is connected to the way in which non-heroic sanctity is portrayed in the literary tropes of the Good Priest and Virtuous Woman of nineteenth and early twentieth-century French literature.
Holy Land and Holy See
(2017-08) Grainger, Gareth Simon Graham
This thesis explores the policies of the Holy See towards the Holy Land in the Pontificates of Popes Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI from 1903 to 1939. It explores the questions of whether the Holy See’s policies were Anti-Semitic or Anti-Zionist. It concludes that whilst the Holy See never opposed the implementation of the 1917 Balfour declaration on a Jewish national home in Palestine it remained absolutely consistent in its twin aims to ensure protection of the Christian Holy Places and the welfare of the Catholic population of the Holy Land.
Hugh Latimer, The King's Reformer, 1530-1539
(2011-05-12) Blandford, Richard
This thesis explores the early career of Hugh Latimer (c. 1485-1555). Against the backdrop of the 1530s in England, it tracks his emergence on the national stage as a controversial preacher and supporter of the King’s Great Matter, his appointment as bishop of Worcester, and his resignation in protest over the Act of Six Articles. The thesis is a response to a research problem presented by the cutting edge of early English Reformation scholarship, namely, the challenges the early evangelical reformers faced in tethering their aspirations to a decidedly ambiguous royal agenda. It is grounded upon the premise that, more than any of his contemporaries, Latimer must be studied in a national context. While many studies have treated Latimer’s career during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, focussing especially on his sermons, preaching skills and martyrdom, his early career, particularly his tenure as bishop of Worcester, has not been adequately explored. The thesis includes the first comprehensive examination of Bishop Latimer’s diocesan activities as revealed in his largely unexploited episcopal register. The thesis demonstrates that from his emergence as a supporter of the royal agenda and champion of reform, until his resignation from the episcopate, Latimer was manifestly the king’s man. Yet he neither expediently nor disingenuously pinned his aspirations to the implementation of the king’s. Until the passing of the Act of Six Articles, royal and reformist causes for Latimer were as indivisible as the royal–divine matrix which underpinned his theology, informed his worldview, and affirmed his vocation as a minister of the word to the realm. In keeping with his nascent understanding of divine kingship and Godly nationhood, the reformation of the body politic entailed the restoration of the church and vice versa. Since reformation fell squarely within the king’s remit, Latimer’s mission as an apostolic and prophetic reformer encompassed the execution of the king’s reformation and the reformation of the king. As the king’s reformer, Latimer’s cure of souls was nothing less than England itself; his parishioners, the king and the king’s subjects. In ministering to his cure, Latimer is presented as a figure who acted on the national stage above all others.
The Leaven in the Council: Joseph Cardijn and the Jocist Network at Vatican II
(2018) Gigacz, Stefan
This thesis studies the contribution of Joseph Cardijn and other bishops and theologians from the YCW (JOC) movement in helping develop the Vatican II vision of lay apostolate, and in the Council’s adoption of the jocist see-judge-act methodology and vision of a Church deeply concerned with the present world.
Literary Crossings: Nonconformists Writing the Australian Landscape
(2018) Handasyde, Kerrie
This thesis draws on previously unexplored fiction and non-fiction to examine spiritual engagement with the Australian landscape and public authoring of a sense of place among the members of the Quakers, Methodists, Congregationalists, Salvation Army and Churches of Christ (1880s-1960s), and provides a compelling alternative methodology for denominational history.
Manning’s Children: Responses to Rerum Novarum in Victoria 1891 to 1966
(2014-06) Mathews, Race
This thesis examines responses by Australian Catholics, predominantly in Victoria, to the social teachings of their Church, culminating with the creation by the bishops in 1938 of the Australian National Secretariat for Catholic Action (ANSCA), and their subsequent adoption and promotion through it of a political and economic philosophy called Distributism. Underlying the main narrative is a fundamental divergence of opinion about the significance of formation of the Catholic conscience through Catholic Action, as on the one hand introduced by the founder of the Young Christian Worker’s Movement (YCW) and future Cardinal Josef Cardijn and enhanced by the philosopher priest Don José María Arizmendiarrieta, and on the other repudiated by Australia’s ‘controversial Catholic layman’, B.A. Santamaria. A key reference point and yardstick throughout is the ‘Evolved Distributism’ of the great complex of worker-owned co-operatives founded by Arizmendiarrieta in the middle nineteen-fifties, at Mondragón in the Basque region of Spain.
Patterning the Past: Memory Studies and Late Antique Syriac Martyrologies
(2022-02) Papadopoulos, Katherin
It is my thesis that memory studies can contribute to our understanding of late antique history, literature, and culture, but such studies would benefit from more theoretical and methodological rigor. I aim to demonstrate this by applying various sociological theories of memory and time to the practice of remembering the past as represented by martyrologies, that is, calendars of saints. After introducing memory studies, its distinctives, contributions and critiques, as well as reviewing some memory studies focused on late antiquity, I present three diachronic case studies inspired by three early Syriac martyrologies. In the first case study I draw on Eviatar Zerubavel’s sociology of time and Andrea Cossu’s concept of commemorative networks to examine these three martyrologies as sites of collective memory. By exposing the social organisation of memory using commemograms and commemorative networks, I aim to uncover the values and master narratives about the past which were important to the groups that compiled these calendars, how they changed, and the sociocultural currents that may have shaped them. In the second I use two key principles drawn from Jeffrey Olick’s sociology of dialogical memory and the work of Gary Fine and Robert Jansen on reputational entrepreneurs and reputational trajectories to investigate the extent to which personal ideologies, local politics, and posthumous reputations of Eusebius, John Chrysostom and Severus of Antioch—three key agents of memory—determine which martyrs are remembered for what reason and illustrate this using the commemoration of Egyptians in martyrologies. In the third, I draw from disaster studies, narrative theory, and the sociology of commemorations to consider how and why earthquakes are remembered in the late antique Mediterranean east in general, and why particular earthquakes are commemorated in two of the Syriac martyrologies. I conclude with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of this study and future directions.
The Scandal of the Scandal of Particularity: An Exploration of Early Church Understandings of Jesus as the Female Divine
(2015-02) Douglas, Sally
Jesus’ status inflames debate. Central to debate is whether Jesus uniquely embodies the divine: thus “scandal of particularity”. Both those who affirm and those who reject this “scandal” regularly eclipse a central proclamation of who Jesus is in many earliest christologies. The scandal of the scandal of particularity is that in various Second Testament and early church texts Jesus is understood as the female divine. Insufficient attention has been devoted to why this is so. Through interdisciplinary research across biblical studies and systematic theology this thesis demonstrates that in the early Jesus movement Wisdom christology and Wisdom soteriology were ignited by collective experiences of “kinesthetic transformation”. The multivalent motivations for the eclipsing of Jesus-Woman Wisdom in the second and third centuries are excavated. The potential implications of this ancient understanding in contemporary context are assessed and it is demonstrated that this scandalous particularity continues to shimmer with vitality and provocation.
Spiritual Affections and the Pastoral Disposition
(2020-03) Gilbert, Sean
In recent years, both writing and teaching on pastoral ministry practice has tended to emphasise the central place of leadership and measurable outcome. Contrary to that trend (though not unsympathetic to it), the thesis investigates the question of whether spiritual affections continue to be a vital aspect of contemporary pastoral ministry. The thesis brought the findings of affect theorists into conversation with the role of spiritual affections in the life and thought of two major pastoral reformers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Jonathan Edwards. That analysis was then synthesised into key considerations of current practical theology. The thesis found that spiritual affections, intentionally attended to, shape distinctive pastoral dispositions in the practitioner which generates a quality of pastoral ministry that is equally original and fruitful. That is, spiritual affections do continue to be a vitalising, thus foundational aspect of contemporary pastoral ministry.
Spiritual Affections and the Pastoral Disposition
(2020-03) Gilbert, Sean
In recent years, both writing and teaching on pastoral ministry practice has tended to emphasise the central place of leadership and measurable outcome. Contrary to that trend (though not unsympathetic to it), the thesis investigates the question of whether spiritual affections continue to be a vital aspect of contemporary pastoral ministry. The thesis brought the findings of affect theorists into conversation with the role of spiritual affections in the life and thought of two major pastoral reformers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Jonathan Edwards. That analysis was then synthesised into key considerations of current practical theology. The thesis found that spiritual affections, intentionally attended to shape distinctive pastoral dispositions in the practitioner which generates a quality of pastoral ministry that is equally original and fruitful. That is, spiritual affections do continue to be a vitalising, thus foundational aspect of contemporary pastoral ministry.
The Complete Sacred Music of Nicolò Isouard (1773 – 1818) and Maltese Sacred Music for The Order of Malta in the Late Eighteenth Century
(2014-03-20) Divall, Richard
Nicolò Isouard (1773-1818) is considered Malta’s national composer. After studies in France and Naples, he returned to his homeland, where from 1794 to 1798 he was an aspiring composer, and employee of the Order of Malta. In 1994 a collection of thirty three autographs of unknown sacred music by Isouard appeared at the Bibliothèque Nationale and I recognised the importance of this collection. My intentions are to provide a précis on the Order, as the sovereign entity ruling Malta at the time, and these works composed for them in their great Conventual Church in Valletta – now St John’s Co-Cathedral. Second, I will provide some background to music on Malta, Isouard’s career and a complete edition and commentary of all of his sacred music. The thesis will include a complete catalogue of his stage works.
The life and contribution of Bishop Charles Henry Davis osb (1815-1854) to the Catholic Church in Australia
(2017) Pender, Graeme
This thesis examines the life, ministry and significant contribution to the early Roman Catholic Church in Sydney (1848-1854) of Bishop Charles Henry Davis, OSB (1815-1854). Histories of this period have focused on Archbishop Polding’s episcopacy whilst seemingly overlooking the valuable work accomplished by his coadjutor, particularly during Polding’s lengthy periods of absence from Sydney. Davis became the driving force, if only temporarily, who held together Polding’s vision that the diocese would become largely staffed by Benedictines, owing to his sound judgement and pastoral capacity, particularly at the monastery.
The Theology and Spirituality of the Body in the Writings of Heloise of the Paraclete.
(2009-05-08) Posa, Carmel
This thesis explores Heloise of the Paraclete’s writings on the topic of ‘the body’, from the perspective of feminist paradigms, to illustrate that her distinctively “incarnational form of language” not only holds theological significance for our day but also marks her out as a key figure within Middle Ages spirituality.

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Browsing Doctorate Theses by Subject "C - Church History"

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