The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality

“LET US MAKE םדא”: AN EDENIC MODEL OF PERSONAL ONTOLOGY by Marla A. Samaan Nedelcu Adviser: Richard M. Davidson ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH DissertationOF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH Dissertation Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary Title: “LET US MAKE םדא”: AN EDENIC MODEL OF PERSONAL ONTOLOGY Name of researcher: Marla A. Samaan Nedelcu Name and degree of faculty adviser: Richard M. Davidson, Ph.D. Date completed: April 2019 Personal ontology studies human constitution and human nature, an increasingly debated topic in Christian theology. Historically, the most prominent models of personal ontology in Christian theology have been substance dualist models. More recently, physicalist models have offered prominent alternatives. This dissertation studies the conflict of interpretations between these two major model groupings. By applying a canonical theology, it then presents an Edenic model of personal ontology that can address the current conflict of interpretations. To achieve this end, the dissertation briefly analyzes substance dualism and physicalism according to the rubrics of constitution and nature, using a model methodology. It then compares the advantages and challenges each offers, and asks whether a model based solely on the normative source of the biblical canon might prove beneficial to the current debate. This question is explored next through a close reading of the Eden narrative (Gen 1-3), which is the biblical pericope that is most foundational to a study of personal ontology. Utilizing the final-form canonical approach and phenomenological-exegetical analysis, this reading delivers answers to the questions of constitution and nature and reveals an Edenic model of personal ontology. In short, the Edenic model highlights both the physicality and the uniqueness of human ontology. It points to a human constitution that is physical, and yet it does not compromise humans’ unique identity or place in God’s creation. This is because the text shows the image of God to be the mark of human identity. This imago Dei is manifested in every function of human nature (all of which are physically constituted), and enables humans to fulfill God’s commission to them. Next, we compare the Edenic model with substance dualism and physicalism, using the same two rubrics of constitution and nature, to see which models may have higher explanatory powers in dealing with current questions of personal ontology. We see that a model of personal ontology that arises from the Eden narrative emphasizes both human physicality and human uniqueness. Such a twin emphasis proves helpful in the current debate in Christian theology, whereas substance dualism emphasizes human identity, and physicalism often highlights human physicality more than human identity. The dissertation ends by encouraging Christian theologians to explore further the new questions about personal ontology that are being raised, but to do so within these twin parameters and on the basis of a model that arises from Scripture. This approach will not only have implications for a study of personal ontology, but likely for an array of Christian beliefs and practices. Andrews University Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary “LET US MAKE םדא”: AN EDENIC MODEL OF PERSONAL ONTOLOGY A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

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"Let Us Make 'adam": An Edenic Model of Personal Ontology

BIBLICAL SOURCES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF THE SOUL IN THE WRITINGS OF THE FATHERS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH, 100-325 C.E.

/pdf/biblical-sources-in-the-development-of-the-concept-of-the-29b3gbp3d4.pdf

Biblical Sources in the Development of the Concept of the Soul in the Writings of the Fathers of the Early Christian church, 100-325 C.E.

In this conceptual paper, I contend that the soul of academic labour is becoming lost in performativity. Performativity, I explain, is a form of regulation and control that deploys technical rationality and judgements to incentivize and punish academics. Indeed, performativity is central to the culture of measurement within contemporary universities. This, I contend, is demoralizing academic labour as performativity only measures and values those dimensions of academic labour that can be captured by quantitative performance indicators. To critique this process, I firstly locate performativity within a moral economy perspective. I argue that the university economy is no longer structured by the moral norm of education as a public good. It has been restructured, commodified and marketized by neo-liberal capitalism. Secondly, I explore how the reorganization of institutional practices and academic identity within the university by performativity wreaks terror in the academic’s soul. Thirdly, I critique the unsatisfying post-structural reduction of the soul to a synonym for subjectivity and offer a sociological conception of the soul as the spiritual dimension of academic labour emerging from deep, rich social relations of production. My conjecture is that the soul is the moral energy and purpose central to species-being: the peculiarly human ability to transform the socio-human world for the good of all. Finally, I suggest that within the soulless technical measure of academic labour that now dominates the university lies the possibility for developing a more soulful normative measure. My aim then is to articulate a dialectical humanist conception of the soul of academic labour in order to critique the reductive positivism of the measured university.

/pdf/lost-souls-the-demoralization-of-academic-labour-in-the-5cfecsjape.pdf

Lost souls? The demoralization of academic labour in the measured university

Attribution theory has long enjoyed a prominent role in social psychological research, yet religious influences on attribution have not been well studied. We theorized and tested the hypothesis that Protestants would endorse internal attributions to a greater extent than would Catholics, because Protestantism focuses on the inward condition of the soul. In Study 1, Protestants made more internal, but not external, attributions than did Catholics. This effect survived controlling for Protestant work ethic, need for structure, and intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Study 2 showed that the Protestant-Catholic difference in internal attributions was significantly mediated by Protestants' greater belief in a soul. In Study 3, priming religion increased belief in a soul for Protestants but not for Catholics. Finally, Study 4 found that experimentally strengthening belief in a soul increased dispositional attributions among Protestants but did not change situational attributions. These studies expand the understanding of cultural differences in attributions by demonstrating a distinct effect of religion on dispositional attributions.

Fundamental(ist) Attribution Error: Protestants Are Dispositionally Focused

Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature

The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today's Pilgrim

The Whole and Divided Self. The Bible and Theological Anthropology. Edited by David E. Aune and John McCarthy. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997. viii + 251 pp. $29.95 (cloth). This book is the product of a group of scholars, mainly from the Department of Theology at Loyola University Chicago, who take a cross-disciplinary approach to the contemporary theological problem of the self as both "whole" and "divided." The subject is chosen for the opportunity that it offers for bringing together the increasingly fragmented theological disciplines of Biblical Studies and Theology, according to the terms of the "Project for Bible and Theology" instigated at Loyola in 1990 under the auspices of the Lilly Endowment. This is a deliberately wide-ranging and somewhat disparate set of essays on the subject of theological anthropology, seeking to unite the approaches of history, narrative, ecology and biblical hermeneutics in our understanding of the self. There is just enough agreement between the writers on what the "self is to make this a coherent cross-disciplinary study, and the individual essays are always interesting even when not strictly to the point. The work of two scholars dominates the discussion: Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self provides the central idea of the self to which most of the writers respond; and an essay by Paul Ricoeur on biblical hermeneutics, given last in the book, presents a developed view of how the Bible forms Christian and Jewish constructions of selfhood. The strength of this book lies in its ability to pinpoint the problems inherent in studying the self at all, rather than in resolving the problem of "division" in the self. First, it is pointed out that there is a division in contemporary treatments of the self, between those which emphasize the "depth" and interior subjectivity of the self, and those which emphasize the "breadth" of social relations and relations with the material world possessed by the self it is briefly asserted that these two approaches are united in Christianity, where the "interior ascent" is simultaneously a "journey out into God's world to work for God's people" (p. 42), but this possibility is not developed. Second, clear expression is given to the historical problem of how to apply the modern term "self " to ancient texts, particularly to the Bible. in a significant essay, Robert A. Di Vito argues that the depth/interior model of selfhood, which has been prevalent in Western philosophy from the time of Plato, is entirely absent from the Old Testament. …

The Whole and Divided Self. the Bible and Theological Anthropology

Edward Howells and Mark A. McIntosh, ed., THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MYSTICAL THEOLOGY

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Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature

The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today's Pilgrim

The Whole and Divided Self. the Bible and Theological Anthropology

Edward Howells and Mark A. McIntosh, ed., THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF MYSTICAL THEOLOGY