introduction

At age 26 I became a Roman Catholic Christian.  I was not brought up as a Christian, but as what would probably best be termed an agnostic humanist.  After a long period of searching for meaning in life I chose to be baptized into Christ and confirmed into the Roman Catholic Faith.  In the first part of this work I explain why I initially chose Roman Catholicism, as opposed to Protestantism, as my Faith.  Although I've since converted to Orthodoxy, my reasons for rejecting Protestantism still hold.

To give a brief summary of the content of this section, my initial rejection of Protestant belief is based upon my rejection of the concept of salvation by faith alone, as this concept intrinsically diminishes the roles of reason, revelation and personal responsibility in one's coming to know God.  This is a very serious problem, as it implies that God has not provided for us every opportunity to learn and follow his ways, not only in a direct way through Revelation, but also in an indirect way, through reason, masking the truth that the problem with mankind is not a lack of opportunity to know God but an unwillingness to follow Him, in both word and action.  True faith must not be seen as being offered in a vacuum, without preparation and without subsequent affirmation, for to demand faith without also giving the opportunity for proper preparation and eventual affirmations of faith would be the sign of a cruel God.  No doubt there are times when faith is all one has, as was true for Jesus' mother, Mary, as she watched Him die a horrible death on the Cross, but before this occurred she was given many demonstrations as to why she should believe in her son, and three days after His death her faith was reaffirmed with His resurrection.  Preparation for and affirmations of faith are essential elements to true Christian belief and are provided by God to a very large extent  through His Catholic Orthodox Church.

In the second part of this work I explain why I made the decision to convert to Orthodoxy.  I decided to embrace the Orthodox Faith when I came to realize that the Roman Catholic's inclusion of the filioque, the clause added by Rome to their Profession of Faith which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, is a significant error, born from limitations in their ontology, this causing certain limitations in both their doctrines of the Trinity and of grace.  This also demonstrated to me that the Pope is not as infallible as he claims to be. As I see it, the core of the problem is that the Romans developed their doctrine from the ontology of St. Augustine, which has the limitation of not emphasizing enough the distinctions between the uncreated nature of God and the created nature of reality, and this includes the created nature of Heaven and of the humanity that Christ takes upon himself with his incarnation as a human being.  This issue was more fully clarified and developed by the Eastern Fathers, but these clarifications were not received by the West as they should have been, mainly due, as I see it, to Rome's insistence upon it's superior authority.

Also in this work I criticize certain interpretations of Orthodoxy which seem to set reason and knowledge against faith, as did the early Protestants.  I point out that according to Orthodox theology itself the limitations on created man's capacity to know the nature and essence of the uncreated Godhead do not apply to man's capacity to come to know the nature and truth of created reality, which includes not only the physical world but also the created supernatural world and God's law.  This knowledge is useful and integral to coming to know the will of God, especially in the context of a Christian God who becomes incarnate as a human being and who takes on human attributes.  The early Fathers clearly advocate the usefulness of reason, not to prove, but to demonstrate, that God exists and that Christ is God Incarnate.  Ultimately my conclusion is that Orthodox criticisms of the concept of scholasticism are unfounded, based mostly upon prejudices against the Roman emphasis on rationalization and knowledge in it's approach to theology, while criticisms of the Roman execution of scholasticism are justified, because of the limitations in their theology mentioned earlier.  I feel my criticisms on these particular issues are consistent with the Orthodox concept of Church infallibility, which accepts that while the Church as a whole is infallible in it's teachings, individuals or groups of individuals within the Church are not infallible in their individual interpretations, being susceptible to human fallibilities.

In the final section of this work I present an overview of what I consider to be the central problems of Christianity today, and the solutions to these problems.