How to obtain full text papers: Most of them are without graphics, so TXT, RTF, or DOC formats are sufficient. Since I write with Wordperfect (Goodbye, Bill!), all are available in WPD with perfect, error free formatting. They are also available in Adobe PDF, which also does a great job of perfectly formatting graphics, although at much larger file sizes.
Please email me at theologynet@paulv.net with the name(s) of what paper(s) you are interested in. I would like to know what your interest is and how the paper might be used. For instance, are you a seminary student? A seeker? A professor? I am making these papers available in this manner so that I retain some minor control over them, and I would like to possibly interact with those who use them. Tell me what format you would prefer and I will send the paper as an email attachment.
Home Theology Home MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources
Summaries of Theology Papers by
Paul Verizzo, M.T.S.
Empirical Proof that Humans are (by nature) Evil, and Yetzers. Two papers best used together. Yetzer is roughly the Hebrew word for "impulse." Of the five possible alternatives of humanity's propensities to do or embrace good and/or evil, I find that the Jewish understanding the most probable. It is this: we are born evil, but the Torah teaches us how to be good. You gotta love the Jewish philosophy, because they find goodness within evil! It gives us the lust to love and the greed to create wealth, and is God's one regret. Yetzers is brief, two pages and 610 words. Empirical Proof looks at human and animal variations as related to sociability. Four pages, 1089 words.
Experience as the Proof of God. Examines the four historical, rational ways of proving God's existence and why they are unable to do so. Here are my personal spiritual experiences that have brought me to where I am. While enlisting some theories of Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1978), I refute his ultimate conclusion and offer an alternative. Eleven pages, 2,824 words, one graphic. Several internet bibliographical references.
Going to Hell: How the Christian Underworld and its Ruler came to be. Do you realize that there is no Hell, no immediate disposition of souls in the Hebrew Bible (OT)? That the "creation" of Hell and Satan as the overlord took place over thousands of years of religious and cultural change? This is a review of the evolution of Hell in Jewish and Christian theology, examining how social and geographic factors eventually gave us the image of a dread place. Eleven pages, 3,341 words.
High Fives and Petulance: If Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Kant Were in the Same Room. A comparison of the theologies of these great thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries. One graphic, internet bibliographic links. Nine pages, 2,531 words.
A Proposal: Christians Need a Yom Kippur. Does the Jewish faith hold a tradition that we would do well to emulate, where Lent does not go? The story of a personal understanding of forgiveness and an examination of both the outer and inner celebrations of Yom Kippur. Seventeen pages, 5,150 words. Several internet citations.
My Theology. Short title, relatively long paper. Contains portions of several papers listed here. Examines good and evil, unitarian/trinitarian christologies, Jesus, direct and indirect revelation, creation and evolution, salvation, stages of spiritual growth. Twenty seven pages, 11,535 words, including seven pages from an 1865 text.
Pelagius: Definer of Orthodoxy and Ancestor of Modern Thoughts. An examination of a heretic, as defined by orthodoxy. How heresy helps define orthodoxy. Pelagian thoughts and concepts, although probably never accepted in their entirety, still influence minority Christian thought and find a following. Thirteen pages, 3,283 words.
The Vagina Dentata as a Motif in Human Sexuality: Ancient Myth and Modern Ramifications. This paper was written for a "Human Sexuality in the Ministry" class, exploring one of the major, long term historical sources of misogyny. Moderns laugh at the perceived ignorance of those who believed in literal teeth within, yet we men still harbor the psychological results of millennia of myth, and women still suffer the results. The topic is one that both male and female ministers should have an understanding of, as we come from our own imbued perspectives. The paper is both funny and serious. Yes, there are pictures. Twelve pages, 3,671 words, graphics.