Reading Scripture in Conflicts

sermon text; MS Word document

A Christian Reading of History

This recording is part of the Marsh Chapel Audio Collection.

Collection Development and the Value of the Library

This is a draft 2 of a discussion paper written for Boston University Libraries

Rambo's Interdisciplinary Approach to Religious Conversion: The Case of St. Augustine

This dissertation illustrates the merits of an interdisciplinary approach to religious conversion by employing Lewis Rambo’s systemic stage model to illumine the process of St. Augustine’s conversion. Previous studies of Augustine’s conversion have commonly explored his narrative of transformation from the perspective of one specific discipline, such as theology, history, or psychology. In doing so, they have necessarily restricted attention to a limited set of questions and problems. By bringing these disciplines into a structured, critical conversation, this study demonstrates how formulating and responding to the interplay among personal, social, cultural, and religious dimensions of Augustine’s conversion process may eventuate in the consideration of issues previously unarticulated and thus unaddressed. Rambo (1993) formulates a model of religious change that consists of what he calls context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences. Change is explained by drawing upon the research and scholarship of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and religionists, in conjunction with the contributions of theologians. This study unfolds in the following chapters: I. Introduction; II. Literature review of scholarship about conversion, with emphasis on explication of Rambo’s model; III. A description of the case of Augustine, drawn from a close reading of the Confessions; IV. Literature review of scholarship about Augustine’s conversion; V. Interdisciplinary interpretation of Augustine’s conversion; and VI. Implications for scholars of conversion, and for pastoral caregivers, as well as recommendations for future research. This dissertation demonstrates how Augustine’s conversion experience was deeply influenced by 1) psychological distress and crisis; 2) the quest to know himself and the divine; 3) interactions with significant others; 4) participation in Christian communities; 5) philosophical and cultural changes; and 6) the encounter with the divine. As such, this study reveals the value of interpreting Augustine’s conversion as an evolving process constituted in multiple factors that can be differentiated from one another, yet clearly interact with one another. It examines the implications of constructing an interdisciplinary approach to Augustine’s conversion narrative for both the academy and the Christian community, and recommends the use of Rambo’s model in studies of other cases of religious change.

Reading Between the Lines: The Potential of Popular Young Adult Fiction in Adolescent Spiritual Formation

Popular culture is a powerful, shaping force in the lives of teenagers between the ages of fourteen through eighteen in the United States today. This dissertation argues the importance of popular fiction for adolescent spiritual formation and it investigates that importance by exploring the significance of narrative for theology and moral formation. The dissertation employs mythic and archetypal criticism as a tool for informing the selection and critique of narratives for use in adolescent spiritual development and it also incorporates insights gained from developmental psychology to lay the groundwork for the development of a curriculum that uses young adult fiction in a program of spiritual formation for teenagers in a local church setting. The dissertation defends the power of narrative in Christian theology and concludes that narrative shapes the imagination in ways that alter perception and are important for the faith life of teenagers in particular. I go on to argue that not all narratives are created equal. In using literary myth criticism in concert with theology, I use the two disciplines’ different aims and methods to fully flesh out the potential of theologies intrinsic to works meant for a largely secular audience. The dissertation compares various works of young adult fiction (M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Terry Pratchett’s Nation in dialogue with a theology of creation; Marcus Zusak’s I am the Messenger and Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl in dialogue with salvation and saviors; and the four novels of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga in dialogue with a theology of hope (eschatology). The dissertation explores how each theme surfaces (even if only implicitly) from both literary and theological standpoints. The dissertation concludes with a sample four-week lesson plan that demonstrates one way the theological and literary critique can be formed into a practical curriculum for use in an adolescent spiritual development setting. Ultimately, this dissertation provides a framework for how practitioners of young adult formation can select, analyze, and develop materials for their teenagers using new works of popular young adult fiction. The dissertation comes to the conclusion that popular fiction contains a wealth of material that can challenge and shape young readers’ own emerging theology.

Value-cognizant Speculative Concurrency Control

A problem with Speculative Concurrency Control algorithms and other common concurrency control schemes using forward validation is that committing a transaction as soon as it finishes validating, may result in a value loss to the system. Haritsa showed that by making a lower priority transaction wait after it is validated, the number of transactions meeting their deadlines is increased, which may result in a higher value-added to the system. SCC-based protocols can benefit from the introduction of such delays by giving optimistic shadows with high value-added to the system more time to execute and commit instead of being aborted in favor of other validating transactions, whose value-added to the system is lower. In this paper we present and evaluate an extension to SCC algorithms that allows for commit deferments.

Adaptive Weighing Designs for Keyword Value Computation

Attributing a dollar value to a keyword is an essential part of running any profitable search engine advertising campaign. When an advertiser has complete control over the interaction with and monetization of each user arriving on a given keyword, the value of that term can be accurately tracked. However, in many instances, the advertiser may monetize arrivals indirectly through one or more third parties. In such cases, it is typical for the third party to provide only coarse-grained reporting: rather than report each monetization event, users are aggregated into larger channels and the third party reports aggregate information such as total daily revenue for each channel. Examples of third parties that use channels include Amazon and Google AdSense. In such scenarios, the number of channels is generally much smaller than the number of keywords whose value per click (VPC) we wish to learn. However, the advertiser has flexibility as to how to assign keywords to channels over time. We introduce the channelization problem: how do we adaptively assign keywords to channels over the course of multiple days to quickly obtain accurate VPC estimates of all keywords? We relate this problem to classical results in weighing design, devise new adaptive algorithms for this problem, and quantify the performance of these algorithms experimentally. Our results demonstrate that adaptive weighing designs that exploit statistics of term frequency, variability in VPCs across keywords, and flexible channel assignments over time provide the best estimators of keyword VPCs.

Inferring Intersection Typings that are Equivalent to Call-by-Name and Call-by-Value Evaluations

We present a procedure to infer a typing for an arbitrary λ-term M in an intersection-type system that translates into exactly the call-by-name (resp., call-by-value) evaluation of M. Our framework is the recently developed System E which augments intersection types with expansion variables. The inferred typing for M is obtained by setting up a unification problem involving both type variables and expansion variables, which we solve with a confluent rewrite system. The inference procedure is compositional in the sense that typings for different program components can be inferred in any order, and without knowledge of the definition of other program components. Using expansion variables lets us achieve a compositional inference procedure easily. Termination of the procedure is generally undecidable. The procedure terminates and returns a typing if the input M is normalizing according to call-by-name (resp., call-by-value). The inferred typing is exact in the sense that the exact call-by-name (resp., call-by-value) behaviour of M can be obtained by a (polynomial) transformation of the typing. The inferred typing is also principal in the sense that any other typing that translates the call-by-name (resp., call-by-value) evaluation of M can be obtained from the inferred typing for M using a substitution-based transformation.

Dopaminergic and Non-Dopaminergic Value Systems in Conditioning and Outcome-Specific Revaluation

Animals are motivated to choose environmental options that can best satisfy current needs. To explain such choices, this paper introduces the MOTIVATOR (Matching Objects To Internal Values Triggers Option Revaluations) neural model. MOTIVATOR describes cognitiveemotional interactions between higher-order sensory cortices and an evaluative neuraxis composed of the hypothalamus, amygdala, and orbitofrontal cortex. Given a conditioned stimulus (CS), the model amygdala and lateral hypothalamus interact to calculate the expected current value of the subjective outcome that the CS predicts, constrained by the current state of deprivation or satiation. The amygdala relays the expected value information to orbitofrontal cells that receive inputs from anterior inferotemporal cells, and medial orbitofrontal cells that receive inputs from rhinal cortex. The activations of these orbitofrontal cells code the subjective values of objects. These values guide behavioral choices. The model basal ganglia detect errors in CS-specific predictions of the value and timing of rewards. Excitatory inputs from the pedunculopontine nucleus interact with timed inhibitory inputs from model striosomes in the ventral striatum to regulate dopamine burst and dip responses from cells in the substantia nigra pars compacta and ventral tegmental area. Learning in cortical and striatal regions is strongly modulated by dopamine. The model is used to address tasks that examine food-specific satiety, Pavlovian conditioning, reinforcer devaluation, and simultaneous visual discrimination. Model simulations successfully reproduce discharge dynamics of known cell types, including signals that predict saccadic reaction times and CS-dependent changes in systolic blood pressure.