Well, the vacation is defiantly over. I got back from Ireland and the next day we had meetings all day. I got the names of my tutors and contacted them about meeting times and reading lists... by the end of the day I had two assignments due in a week. I meet with one tutor every Wednesday for the next eight weeks. We'll talk and study historiography which is basically the philosophy of doing history. How, and why we study history. I'll have a 2,500 word paper due every week, but thankfully he had mercy on me and only assigned me a 1,500 word essay for this first meeting. Its on an interesting topic- St. Augustine. The question is: To what extent does Augustine allow for human action in his account of history. The answer that I'm working on is vague and waffling, so its perfect for a college philosophy class.

I believe that by our post-modern standards, Augustine doesn't put much in the hands of men, and instead depicts history as the on going work of God. Augustine allows that man may be at least a contributor to the process, and would certainly hold that man has free will in the matter, but Augustine would also contend that God directs the paths of men and empires to His desired ends. Kinda like making a labyrinth in which everyone is free to move as they wish, but the end is always under control and always predictable.

However, in Augustine's day this position of free will and man sharing some role with God in the making of history was monumental. To Augustine and his contemporaries, his approach to history may indeed put a lot of weight on man... at least much more than previously placed. In that age, "fate" and "astrology" were believed to direct man's life... to take that power away from "fate" and place it in the free will of a single God and his creation mankind, was a huge shift in thinking.

Anyway, its a lot of fun to write. My other tutor is for the class philosophical theology, and I will meet with her every other week... so only 4 times, but one of those times is Thursday. While it is stressful to schedule our first meeting so soon, it will alleviate pressure in the final week of my term. The paper she assigned is on the topic of faith.

The questions are: "Is faith rational?" and "Is faith opposed to reason?" These are controversial topics and I hope I don't offend anyone with my positions on them, but none-the-less here we go. In order to answer these questions it is imperative to define what "rational" and "reason" actually mean. While these are lengthy topics for papers in themselves I will just contend that to rationally hold a position it must be justifiably defensible. There must be ample support in order to hold it.

With this definition I contend that faith must, at some core level, be irrational and opposed to reason. My favorite philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, is famous for claiming that in religious belief one must make a "leap of faith." Which is to say that, in order to believe in God, one must accept that a justified reason is unavailable and always will be... there will never be PROOF of God's existence, therefore God values our willingness to suspend and abandon justification and make the "leap of faith" that He does exist, even and especially in the absence of concrete evidence.

I think Kierkegaard is right. The value of Faith is that it depends on a lack of justification, that it has no dependence on human intellect or reason and depends completely on an unprovable truth revealing itself AFTER the point of no return. That's good stuff right there.

Needless to say, this will be an intense semester, but it ought to be a lot of fun.

I want to quickly tell my family that I miss you and love you all, and to Grandpa Freddy: "I love you very much and I am so proud of you, and thank you so much for your support, prayers and love through my life."