God, time, and us...

(*Copy of the Metaphysics paper sent to, and approved by Dr. Sanford, FUS)

Eastern Schism

(*Copy of my Historical Foundations paper on the Eastern Schism. Not my best work, but an interesting concept)

People from other Religious and Salvation

How, can people in other religious situations come to a saving grace?

Update Feb 2009

It has been a while and I thought it would be good to update on what is going on

The last few months I have been influenced by the words of an Eastern Catholic friend of mine. His concept of Theosis is much more like what I saw the patristic church to teach as I read Augustine and the early fathers during my conversion. I have a lot of issue with the modern jurisdiction of the West (i.e., ordering the Christian life according to the concepts of sin and punishment). Western Christians need to move away from the constant emphasis upon sin and punishment. In the East one does things, e.g., not eating blood, or -- in the case of women -- wearing a veil during prayer, etc., because it deepens ones commitment to Christ and incarnates His life into our own being, and not because of some canonical penalty. Theology must not be reduced to canon law. Salvation (i.e., theosis) is an ontologically trans-formative process, and not a legal declaration.

/rant

Sept 11th- Is it God's fault?

Reading the memorials for the past few days makes me think of how individual people deal with pain. How do we reconcile an all-loving God with what happened in a tragedy such as september 11th? Or with the recent bridge collapse in minneapolis?