Browsing by Author "Arnal, William"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12

Open Access
"Better to Reign in Hell, than Serve in Heaven": Satan's Transition From a Heavenly Council member to the Ruler of Pandaemonium
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2012-09) Wright, Allan Edwin Charles; Arnal, William; Kuikman, Jacoba; Greifenhagen, Franz Volker; Hegedus, Tim
In this thesis, I argue that Satan was not perceived as a universal malevolent deity, the embodiment of evil, or the “ruler of Pandaemonium” within first century Christian literature or even within second and third century Christian discourses as some scholars have insisted. Instead, for early “Christian” authors, Satan represented a pejorative term used to describe terrestrial, tangible, and concrete social realities, perceived of as adversaries. To reach this conclusion, I explore the narrative character of Satan selectively within the Hebrew Bible, intertestamental literature, Mark, Matthew, Luke, Q, the Book of Revelation, the Nag Hammadi texts, and the Ante-Nicene fathers. I argue that certain scholars’ such as Jeffrey Burton Russell, Miguel A. De La Torre, Albert Hernandez, Peter Stanford, Paul Carus, and Gerd Theissen, homogenized reconstructions of the “New Testament Satan” as the universalized incarnation of evil and that God’s absolute cosmic enemy is absent from early Christian orthodox literature, such as Mark, Matthew, Luke, Q, the Book of Revelation, and certain writings from the Ante- Nicene Fathers. Using Jonathan Z. Smith’s essay Here, There, and Anywhere, I suggest that the cosmic dualist approach to Satan as God’s absolute cosmic enemy resulted from the changing social topography of the early fourth century where Christian “insider” and “outsider” adversaries were diminishing. With these threats fading, early Christians universalized a perceived chaotic cosmic enemy, namely Satan, being influenced by the Gnostic demiurge, who disrupts God’s terrestrial and cosmic order. Therefore, Satan transitioned from a “here,” “insider,” and “there,” “outsider,” threat to a universal “anywhere” threat.
Open Access
Bringing It All Back Home: Apocalypse, Colonialism, and The Study of Religion
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2012-09) Bailey, Jesse McKenzie; Arnal, William; Volker Greifenhagen, Franz; Juschka, Darlene; McCutcheon, Russell T.
In the study of religion, it will not take long before students come across the term “apocalypse” or “apocalypticism.” The place that such terms have made in the study of religion suggests that they refer to very tangible aspects of religious traditions. Moreover, the vast majority of scholarship, by way of comparison, reinforces the idea that the category apocalypse and apocalypticism represent a genre of writing native to Christianity and Judaism. Thus, studies of so-called apocalyptic texts often engage in comparisons of other “apocalyptic” materials contained within the Judeo-Christian tradition. These studies often base their comparisons on literary themes, and in the process participate in the tacit reification of the sui generis category of apocalypse. In an attempt to approach apocalypticism and the category apocalypse in a different light, and using the Book of Revelation as a model, this study attempts to account for the social and historical roots of apocalyptic texts as they occur under conditions of foreign domination. Comprised essentially of two primary sections, this analysis begins by establishing the theoretical framework first by considering the context of colonialism as a discourse that defines the social and political environment in question, and second by establishing the intellectual framework of this analysis in postcolonial and performance theory. By utilizing these theoretical frameworks it is possible to analyze the complex sets of relationships that are active in the colonial frontier. The second half of this analysis is concerned exclusively with historical data. First, by describing the provincial territories under the Roman Empire, discussing first i how Rome represented itself as a legitimate form of rule for its subjects, and second how provincial cults interpreted their new political circumstances. As a final provocation this analysis will conclude with a selective comparison of the book of Revelation with the modern American political movement known as the Tea Party. In this analysis, we will look specifically at how the social and political concerns of both Revelation and the rhetoric and language of the Tea Party find similar expressions in their respective discourses. In addition to the similarities of the respective data, this thesis will also argue that categories such as “apocalypse” and “religion” mystify the data in question, placing it outside the confines of the intelligible, social world. ii
Open Access
Celebration Of Authorship Program 2016-2017
(University of Regina Library, 2017) Ackerman, Jennifer; Ackerman, Katrina; Anderson, Robert; Arnal, William; Aziz, Madina; Blake, Raymond; Blakley, Janelle; Coleman, Cory; Dai, Liming; DeSantis, Gloria; Diaz, Joshua; Doke Sawatzky, Katie; Engel, Brenna; Gane, David; Gidluck, Lynn; Gottselig, Jared; Grant, Trevor; Grimard, Celine; Jaffe, JoAnn; Johnson, Dale; Juschka, Darlene; Kikulwe, Daniel; Hillabold, Jean; Mah, Jeannie; Marroquin, Rebbeca; McDonald, Anne; Meehan SJ, John; Nzunguba, lbio; Pete, Shauneen; Pirbhai-Illich, Fatima; Powell, Marie; Russell, Gale; Shami, Jeanne; Solomon, Michaela; Stringer, Kyrsten; Taylor, Caitlin; Triggs, Valerie; Vetter, Mary
Open Access
Dogma, Dada, and Disneyland: Investigating the Impact of Space on Ideological Formation
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2017-08) Manweiller, Shallin Kyldii; Bond, Kevin; Arnal, William; Anderson, Brenda; Martin, Craig
Academic investigations of ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’ have at times conflated each with the other. Within modern academic study, there is emerging research that attempts to decouple this association by underscoring the importance of processes of ritualization—the specific ways humans elevate actions and thought processes to importance—on identity-making and social participation. Through a combination of literature review and analysis of current social and legal issues, this thesis looks at the construction of space on three levels—the experienced, perceived, and imagined—in an effort to show that ritual, community, and identity are shaped and constrained more by economic and social influence and the administrative adjudication of the state than by authority invested in the religious sphere. This suggests that the historical pattern of linking ‘ritual’ with ‘religion’ erases perceptions of how ritualization occurs in other social areas and affects the ability to recognize new forms of ritualization as they develop. This thesis begins with an effort to trouble the historical association between ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’ through an investigation into how human cognition shapes language, which in turn shapes human expectation and experience. The second chapter offers an analysis of intersections of law, church, and state to illustrate how exercises in authority legitimate forms of ritualization that perpetuate existing hegemonic structures. The third chapter comprises an investigation of how the politics of marginalization and exclusion shape the accessibility of the ritualizations of the public sphere. The fourth and final chapter explores how highly customizable corporate spaces can be rented and transformed into temporary sites of ritualization that serve to both segregate and spur social identity-making. This project concludes that ritualizations serve to arbitrate social space and the status quo and do so whether or not an individual is aware they are occurring. As a result of this, I propose the investigation and comprehension of ritual use and emergence may benefit from reconceiving the categories employed to structure such undertakings. Such reconstruction could assist with decoupling the historical association of ‘ritual’ with ‘religion’, invite further consideration on the social value of ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’, and stir interest in emerging and evolving ritualizations. While I suggest some categories that may facilitate different entry points into reclassification, further research would be necessary to see if this strategy would be provocative.
Open Access
Furrows of the Field: Methodology in Writing The Religious History of the Canadian Prairies
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2019-04) Thompson, Connor John; Arnal, William; Hillis, Bryan; Magnan, Andre; Knuttila, Murray
The primary concern of this thesis is explanation of the drastic decline in church attendance that has characterized Prairie religious history, and Canadian history more broadly, over the course of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. In the case of the Canadian Prairies as a region, this transformation has also been tied up with the change from a heavily social gospel influenced society based on the highly valued ethic of co-operation to a society that is increasingly non-church going and which more highly values the ethic of individualism. While more recent Prairie history has seen the region incorporated into North American consumer culture, I argue for the continued utility of regional analysis based on the mythology, symbols, and rituals that reinforce the sense of a distinct Prairie identity, and argue that analysis of these things is deeply tied into the transformation of Prairie religious history. Perhaps the most important element of Prairie social mythology is the farmer-as-symbol, which was once imagined as living by Christian ethics, but is increasingly imagined today as an entrepreneurial lone figure, whose values are concomitant with the individualist ethic promoted by emerging forms of religiosity. I demonstrate this by looking at how consumer culture molds the Prairie social mythology, and particularly, through a case study of the region’s most prominent annual celebration – the Calgary Stampede – show the ways in which this mythology has been understood in recent years. The thesis concludes with consideration of new forms of religiosity that have emerged with this change in Prairie culture, and in particular, Spiritual But Not Religious behaviors. By paying special attention to how the term religion is used to categorize elements of life by both historians and historical actors, I treat religion primarily as an emic category, arguing that understanding contemporary Prairie religious history involves an understanding of how “religion” is treated within the popular consciousness of the region.
Open Access
Jesus Christ Superscribe: Knowledge, Interpretation, and Teaching in the Gospel of Matthew
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2019-07) Guillen, Esther Marie Snarr; Arnal, William; Juschka, Darlene; Bond, Kevin; Braun, Willi
Jesus-characters are most often created as a reflection of their authors, and the author/s of the text traditionally known as “The Gospel According to Matthew” is no different. Matthew creates a Jesus that is focussed on knowledge retention, interpretation, and dissemination. Throughout the text, they set up different scribe-characters as foils for Jesus, so that Jesus’s superior ability to interpret and teach the Hebrew writings can be displayed. Like ben Sira, Matthew creates an “ideal scribe” in their Jesus, and also displays the characteristics of the “ideal scribe” in the composition of the text. This scribe is an able teacher, has complete knowledge of the Hebrew prophecies and the Law, and has been granted, from a divine source, the ability to correctly interpret their knowledge. Matthew’s biography is a creative work, formed by re-working sources and use of original material. The author/s interest in the nature of prophecy and divine knowledge is distinct from other Jesus-biographies, which is displayed by creation of composite prophetic quotations, a requirement for verbatim fulfillment of prophecy, and use of dream-revelations. These are Greco-Roman literary techniques, and Matthew’s biography, alongside other biographies of Jesus, should be imagined to have the same compositional process as other texts of its period and genre.
Open Access
On the Changes and Influences of the Absolute Truth of Neo-Confucianism in Pre-Modern China
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2016-02) Wang, Shengying; Bond, Kevin; Ren, Yuan; Arnal, William
The following paper focuses on the changes and influences of the absolute truth of Neo-Confucianism in pre-modern China. First of all, Li of Neo-Confucianism attempted to replace the highest divine of Tian/Shangdi but actually became the amalgamation with the divine and the absolute truth. Through the resistance against Li by Chinese thinkers, the principles of Li were replaced by the idea of “public” as the highest truth of political ideology in the late pre-modern China. However, those thinkers did not break the “continuative mode of thought” which was the way of thinking of the absolute truth of Li, and “the public” was one of the production of this way of thinking. In the case of soulstealing crisis, “the public” was already used to oppress on the rights of minority or “private.” At the end of pre-modern China, Taiping Rebellion showed a pattern of 20th century’s Chinese revolutions which attempted to create the “completely new” political ideology. But the “Christian” ideology of Taiping Rebellion was actually formed by the features of Confucianism including ethics, political system and social structures. The historiographic statements on Taiping Rebellion in 20th century’s China also stepped into the blind faith to the concept of “completely new” and to the discussion on the savior’s essence of Taiping Rebellion.
Open Access
Reading, Writing and a Heretic: Problematizing Assumptions in New Testament Canonization
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2017-01) Lindenbach, Christian Terrance; Arnal, William; Bond, Kevin; Juschka, Darlene
This thesis examines the influences behind the canonization of the New Testament literature through examinations of Hellenistic educational and textual practices, Jewish scribalism, and scholarly disputes between early Christian intellectuals. This is to problematize the assumption of the development of the New Testament as something orderly and vectored. To that end, first, Hellenistic textual and educational practices will be examined to show how Homeric poetry was redacted and collected in the academy, with specific eyes to the creation of lists by Cicero and Quintilian for lists of books to read in a liberal education. Secondly, this process of scholarship continues into Alexandrian Judaism with the Middle-Platonizing Philo, and his allegorical exegesis of the Jewish Pentateuch, to show the inclusion of Yahwistic Literature into some intellectual circles, and the resultant influence of allegory as hermeneutic in the Mishnaic literature. Thirdly, this allegorical method of textual analysis continues into early Christianity, and an examination of the scholarly discussions between figures like Irenaeus and Marcion will be done to illustrate how the evolution of the New Testament is akin to scholarly, academic discourse over textual collection and editing, and not an apocalyptic struggle of orthodoxy, as the polemicists would argue. The result of this is to call into question assumptions in the field of New Testament canonization, and give voice to Hellenistic, Jewish and Gnostic sources as major influences on the collection and content of the New Testament literature, in contradiction to popular understandings of the history of canonization.
Open Access
SIPP Briefing Note Issue 10 April 2005
(Saskatchewan Institute of Public Policy, 2005-04) Arnal, William; Green, Joyce; Juschka, Darlene; Merrett, James
Not in Polite Company Religious and Political Discursive Formations on Same-Sex Marriage
Open Access
"Thrice-Male...Thrice-Powerful": Gender and Authority in Apocryphon of John
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2016-01) Korpan, Roxanne Lee; Arnal, William; Juschka, Darlene; Volker, Franz
The following paper examines Apocryphon of John through two different analytic frameworks that make this complex and at times, seemingly bizarre 2nd century C.E. Egyptian text intelligible: (Middle) Platonism and gender. First, the text is analyzed in continuity with the ideological content and rhetorical strategies of contemporary Middle Platonic literature. Next, the text is analyzed as a gendered piece of literature, with attention paid to the rhetorical usefulness of gender in deploying motifs of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny in Apocryphon of John and other contemporary literature. Each mode of analysis shows how Apocryphon of John sets up an oppositional narrative framework that promotes a valuation of two competing social hierarchies and systems of authority, with one positioned as inherently and irrevocably superior to the other. The comparative work of the paper that focuses on Apocryphon of John’s integration of contemporary philosophical and gendered ideologies and rhetorical strategies mediates early approaches to Nag Hammadi literature, and more broadly, so-called gnostic literature, that on the one hand, analyze these texts primarily if not exclusively within the ideological framework of (heretical) Christianity, and on the other hand, see women’s liberation behind the feminine imagery included in the texts.
Open Access
Transformations: Treatment for Alcohol Addiction as a Process of Consciousness Expansion
(Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2012-09) Payne, Dylan Duran; Baydala, Angelina; Smythe, William; Hampton, Mary; Arnal, William
A body of research has suggested that an understanding of the lived experience of addicted individuals is an important yet neglected part of developing effective treatments for addictions. In an attempt to further understand the subjective experience of addiction, a phenomenological study was undertaken with the aim of understanding if consciousness studies could inform and enrich current treatments for addiction. Specifically, the study examined the utility of conceptualizing an addiction as a problem of restricted consciousness and its treatment as a process of consciousness expansion. This study attempted to further understanding related to changes in consciousness, and the development of the self-concept, that occur as a person moves towards recovery. In particular, it attempted to identify those experiences, or shared characteristics of different experiences, that precipitated movements to expanded forms of consciousness and more integrated self-concepts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six individuals who purported to have an addiction to alcohol. The results were analyzed using the methods of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. As well as providing insight into the lived experience of addiction, an argument for the utility of introducing consciousness development into the treatment of an addiction to alcohol is presented.
Open Access
University of Regina Community Authors 2016-2017
(Univeristy of Regina Library, 2017) Russell, Gale; DeSantis, Gloria; Blake, Raymond; Gidluck, Lynn; Triggs, Valerie; Dai, Liming; Arnal, William; Juschka, Darlene; Johnson, Dale; Ackerman, Katrina; Anderson, Robert; Grant, Trevor; Arnal, William; Powell, Marie; Hillabold, Jean; Nzunguba, Ibio; Gane, David; Pirbhai-Illich, Fatima; Pete, Shauneen; McDonald, Anne; Vetter, Mary; Kikulwe, Daniel; John Meehan, SJ; Jaffe, JoAnn; Jeanne Shami; Mah, Jeannie; Ackerman, Jennifer; Aziz, Madina; Blakley, Janelle; Coleman, Cory; Diaz, Joshua; Doke Sawatzky, Katie; Engel, Brenna; Gottselig, Jared; Grimard, Celine; Marroquin, Rebbeca; Solomon, Michaela; Stringer, Kyrsten; Taylor, Caitlin