Basing itself on Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, the existentialism of Martin Buber, African philosophy and African belief systems, this dissertation examines the development of a healer and healing community in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments, Why Are We So Blest, Two Thousand Seasons, The Healers and Osiris Rising. Using process philosophy and existential philosophy the first chapter re-interprets African belief systems' concepts, namely, the godhead, gods, ancestors, and human purpose. Chapter Two argues that Two Thousand Seasons articulates the social ontology of a healing community. Chapter Three argues that The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born articulates the immediate or conformal phase of healer education. Chapter Four argues that Fragments outlines the innovative phase of healer education. Asserted in Chapter Five is the claim that Why Are We So Blest? describes the reflective phase of a healer's development. Chapter Six holds that The Healers propounds the preparatory phase of healer education. The last chapter claims that Osiris Rising constitutes the application phase of healer development. The dissertation argues each of these phase are based on a corresponding social development. The study holds that Armah's critical re-appropriation of African belief systems is an important pedagogical contribution to the building of a progressive African social movement.

Building on the theoretical foundation laid by Alfred North Whitehead and Christian process theologians, the work seeks to clarify the nature and identity of the Christian church universal and to address critical issues facing the church in the twenty-first century, such as communal identity, pluralism, and issues of continuity and change. Chapter One identifies key issues in contemporary ecclesiology. The chapter serves as an introduction to subjects and methods employed in the following chapters. Chapter Two describes the God/world and God/church relationships that provide for the church's identity. This chapter begins by explaining the 'traditional' binary model of God put forward by process theologians. The chapter then moves beyond this model by proposing a Trinitarian overlay. Here the Trinity provides the structure by which the world is included into God's own being. The church's identity and mission are established by and modeled after the Trinity's mission of inclusive love. The third chapter addresses issues of continuity and change. Ecclesiology must be the study of the ' real church (following Küng).' The church is the church as it is found concretely in history. It is not an abstract ideal or a mystical body that hovers over the real, concrete, historical church. Whitehead's understanding of the nature of societies and his call for societies to embrace adventure provide the framework for a discussion of continuity and change within the church. The title of the fourth chapter is "Church in a Pluralistic Age." The chapter advocates that the church take a pluralistic and dialogical stance in relation to the plurality of religions and ideologies found in the world today. Following Nicholas Rescher and Mark Heim, the chapter clarifies how a truly pluralistic view differs from an inclusivistic view. The final two chapters of the work deal with the 'marks of the church.' Chapter Five addresses what have traditionally been called the marks in the catholic church: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. This chapter compares and contrasts the present ecclesiology with other prominent ecclesiologies using these marks as the rubric. Chapter Six addresses the marks of the Reformation: Word, Sacraments and concordant community.

This thesis interprets and critiques what is termed the 'myth of oneness' within the western philosophical and theological tradition, seeking to help transform South Korean Christianity, especially its perspective on other religions, and its attitude toward the reunification of Korea. Whitehead's process philosophy and its resulting theology, and the yin-yang paradigm of Asia are presented as alternative paradigms to help transform the myth of oneness. This project develops a relational and transformative Asian hermeneutic incorporating Gadamer's hermeneutic of the fusion of horizons, Habermas' critical hermeneutic of communicative action, Korean Minjung theology's concern for the oppressed, C. S. Song's transpositional methodology, and Jung Young Lee's interpretation of marginality. The myth of oneness is defined and critiqued as a problematic paradigm based ontologically on the neo-Platonic understanding of being as static, changeless, perfect, and absolute, superior to all other existences and claiming soteriological superiority over all other religions. This philosophical myth of oneness has historically been reflected in the theologies of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, with their predominant influence on all western theology. As the core theological expression of the myth of oneness, the doctrine of God in classical theism is presented and critiqued. Jürgen Moltmann's panentheistic Trinitarian perspective and Alfred North Whitehead's dipolar theism are articulated as modern alternative modes of theism more akin to Asian modes of thoughts.As an Asian alternative to the myth of oneness the yin-yang paradigm is introduced and analyzed, emphasizing its relational (changeological) and dynamic character. The yin-yang paradigm is seen as helping Korean churches to transform the myth of ontological and soteriological oneness toward a more organic, dynamic, and relational understanding of God. Finally, this project develops and envisions a more dynamic, relevant praxis for Korean churches in two areas: (1) inter-religious dialogue and (2) the reunification of North and South Korea.

Human betweenness means that the humans live between transcendence and ordinariness. Betweenness refers to ordinary human life transformed into the sacred. Transcendence lures ordinariness toward the sacred. Betweenness discloses the Way, a way to be human. This idea of human betweenness derives from the East Asian (Confucian-Daoist) interpretation of human being, in which the humans are one with Heaven and Earth. Here, the betweenness, that is, the 'being-between' Heaven and Earth, refers to everything in the world. It means that the purpose of human life is to integrate them into the wholeness of life, which is the sacred. This East Asian idea of human betweenness, the dissertation argues, resonates with the Western thoughts of Being, God, and/or Nature. This resonance will be examined in the modern and contemporary Western notions of human being in Heidegger, Corrington, Whitehead, Neville and Keller. In so doing, the dissertation discerns three forms of integration of the betweenness of transcendence and ordinariness. The East Asian idea of betweenness in Confucianism and Daoism stresses a human initiative, both Heidegger and Corrington emphasize the transcendent initiative, and process thinkers such as Whitehead, Neville and Keller appreciate the ordinary initiative. After all, human betweenness is the idea of the transformation of the ordinariness into the sacred by the luring force of transcendence. Both transcendence and ordinariness are betweenized because it is the way for human beings to live in a way of being human and to perceive the world. Ordinariness is transcended whenever human being experiences a certain sense of ecstatic union with things in the world. This sense of ecstasy, of a feeling of going beyond the ordinariness, is transcendental in the sense that it is extra/ordinary which means it is beyond ordinariness. In this way, human being is connected to the whole world, that is, the universe. Human life is all about this integration of transcendence and ordinariness into the sacred union. It asks human responsibility for it because it is human being that feels the luring and beckoning touches of transcendence over the ordinariness.

This dissertation argues that the philosophical and theological problem of the One and the Many as understood by process theologians in general, and Joseph A. Bracken in particular, is a pseudo-problem. This pseudo-problem arises from collapsing metaphysics into cosmology and denying the essential aspects of the distinction between God and the world as articulated in the various versions of classical theism. The argument is made by expositing, analyzing, and critiquing the process theology of Bracken. The thesis concludes that by denying key features of the traditional Creator, process theology in general and Bracken’s theology in particular both precipitate and make insoluble their understandings of the problem of the One and the Many. It is argued that the problem of the One and the Many in process thought is ultimately an attempt to account for all of reality based on the metaphysical principles applicable only to finite, created, in classical theism. This problem is described as the ‘problem of mutual ultimate causality.’ The thesis closes by setting forth the classical understanding of God as the infinitely transcendent Creator God who is self-existent, pure act, and simple. It argues that the problem of mutual ultimate causality is obviated only by admitting the necessity of an ultimate reality that is not subject to the metaphysical principles of finite, created, reality as defined by classical theism.