The title of this blog post is meant to catch your attention more than anything, and if you are reading this, then I guess it worked!!

The purpose of this post is to simply announce, for those who haven’t seen them, a couple of papers that I have recently posted on my Scribd account.

The first, entitled “Insights from the Ascension of Isaiah“, is a re-publishing of a couple of old blog posts dealing with the early Christian text, The Ascension of Isaiah. I analyze the details of this text regarding how Isaiah ascended up through the various levels of heaven to the highest heaven, where he was given the privilege of seeing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — as three separate persons.

The second, “Three Gods in One: Perspectives on Mormon Social Trinitarianism“, is a paper that I was required to write for a class in Systematic Theology at Marquette University (with Prof. Ralph Del Colle).  The paper is quite different from the material that I usually write about or post here on this blog, but I hope that it is of interest. It is quite a long paper and looks at LDS perspective on the Trinity in the writings of Joseph Smith, and how his views are interpreted by LDS thinkers: Orson Pratt, David Paulsen, and Blake Ostler.  Again, systematic theology is not my cup of tea, but I hope my little foray into the field here is at least somewhat entertaining.

I also just recently posted a paper entitled “Insights into Ezekiel’s Remarkable Merkabah Vision,” which is, again, a reposting of one of the first pieces I wrote on this blog.  It looks at that wild and crazy vision of Ezekiel, where he saw the throne of God on the backs of some interesting creatures, and so forth, and interprets it in light of the objects that were present in the Holy of Holies of the Temple.  Basically, the theory is that what Ezekiel was seeing was a portable version of the throne of God in the Holy of Holies. It is a very short piece and doesn’t go into much detail, but I think that the idea is interesting.

NB: You can see a great presentation by William Hamblin related to this last topic here.

I plan to post items on my Scribd account periodically, so check there every once in a while for the latest piece.