Specialisation in Religious Studies
DOCRS-2024-01: Christianity and Moral Leadership
Leadership should be considered broader than the traditional sense of conceiving it as solely limited to institutions or individuals that occupy positions endowed with power or influence in leading a group or society. When ordinary people seek to direct or influence others toward views or priorities that impact people’s lives, leadership is also present. This area of research focuses on the interrelationship between Christian values and moral leadership on the level of the universal and the situational and in its theoretical and practical aspects. It includes research on Christianity’s relationship and dialogue with the practice of ethical or moral leadership in various subjects such as society in general, politics, digital platforms, popular movements, the environment, and pastoral care.
Principal Supervisor: Ian Shelley Sasha Pugal Alabanza(ianalabanza@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy
DOCRS-2024-02: Dogmatic Theology
Dogmatic theology is a discipline seeking to understand the Christian faith, particularly the confession of faith expressed in the credo. It entails the speculative study of God and his works, such as the doctrine of God, Christology (e.g. the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ, the life of Christ), redemption(e.g. the nature of grace, the last things), Sacraments (e.g. general principles of sacramental theology, the nature of each sacrament). Following Scripture and Church tradition, dogmatic theology engages in the explanation of the content of Christian faith in a coherent way and in dialogue with different cultures.
Principal Supervisor: Thomas Cai(thomas.cai@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy
DOCRS-2024-03: Biblical and Linguistic Studies
Biblical studies focus on scriptural texts in three different dimensions. First, from a historical perspective, what a given biblical passage might or could have meant for the intended audience was first composed. Second, from a literary perspective, how a given biblical passage achieves its rhetorical goal, constructs its narrative progression, and how the textual and lexical elements within a course relate to each other semantically, linguistically, and semiotically. Finally, biblical studies approach scriptural texts concerning how they have been or are being received by the different generations of their readers. For example, how a given biblical text should be interpreted as part of the canonical bible; how a given biblical passage has been used in history. Contemporary biblical hermeneutics propose to approach the text from perspectives inspired by the fruit of the latest insights of human sciences, e.g., sociological, psychological, and other contextual approaches are also possible perspectives for modern readers to appreciate and appropriate the inexhaustible meanings of the biblical texts.
Principal Supervisor: Andrew Leong(andrew.leong@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy
DOCRS-2024-04: Philological/Linguistic Analysis of Biblical Texts
Philological analysis of Biblical texts compared with Akkadian, Sumerian and Ugaritic non-Biblical texts have helped biblical investigation achieve great new hermeneutic and exegetical results in the past two centuries. The linguistic and philological analysis of Biblical texts and Apocrypha has become an essential tool for assisting the texts in revealing their secrets. The linguistic analysis of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic for the Old and New Testaments, as well as Coptic, Geʿez, and Old Slavic, amongst other ancient languages, for the Apocrypha, is an ever-growing research area for religious and Biblical studies and an indispensable element for the edition and publication of new Apocrypha and other ancient texts which are being discovered every day.
Principal Supervisor: Roberto Ceolin(roberto.ceolin@usj.edu.mo)
Academic Unit: Faculty of Religious Studies and Philosophy
