Beyond Homoiousios and Homoousios: Exploring North American Indigenous Concepts of the Shalom Community of God (Chapter 2 of The Trinity Among the Nations)

The fourth-century battle over the interpretation of a single developed trinitarian theology laid the groundwork for numerous binary trajectories, with some resulting in Christian imperialism. Western Christianity\u27s early preoccupation with divine ontology, coupled with the military might of the Christian empire and the West\u27s inability to hold the mystery of God in tension, has beleaguered Christians and other monotheists for centuries. An Indigenous understanding of the divine shalom community may offer different choices that are perhaps closer to the constructed understandings of Trinity held by early followers of the Christ. In their various perceptions, early Jewish Christians recognized and acknowledged a place in their worldview for a trinitarian construct without the trappings of extrinsic categorization or the burden of ontological fixation. If we must talk of God in ontological terms, which again is beyond any of our comprehension, then perhaps the image of the community of the Creator, existing eternally in shalom relationality, can lead us beyond much of the former dialogue that has centered itself on ontological substance, and toward a better understanding of our own communal ontology

Sizes of Confirmed Globular Clusters in NGC 5128: A Wide-Field High-Resolution Study

Using Magellan/IMACS images covering a 1.2 x 1.2 sq. degree FOV with seeing of 0.4"-0.6", we have applied convolution techniques to analyse the light distribution of 364 confirmed globular cluster in the field of NGC 5128 and to obtain their structural parameters. Combining these parameters with existing Washington photometry from Harris et al. (2004), we are able to examine the size difference between metal-poor (blue) and metal-rich (red) globular clusters. For the first time, this can be addressed on a sample of confirmed clusters that extends to galactocentric distances about 8 times the effective radius, R$_{eff}$, of the galaxy. Within 1 R$_{eff}$, red clusters are about 30% smaller on average than blue clusters, in agreement with the vast majority of extragalactic globular cluster systems studied. As the galactocentric distance increases, however, this difference becomes negligible. Thus, our results indicate that the difference in the clusters' effective radii, r$_e$, could be explained purely by projection effects, with red clusters being more centrally concentrated than blue ones and an intrinsic r$_e$--R$_{gc}$ dependence, like the one observed for the Galaxy.Comment: 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

The Centaurus Group and the Outer Halo of NGC 5128: Are they Dynamically Connected?

NGC 5128, a giant elliptical galaxy only $\sim 4$ Mpc away, is the dominant member of a galaxy group of over 80 probable members. The Centaurus group provides an excellent sample for a kinematic comparison between the halo of NGC 5128 and its surrounding satellite galaxies. A new study, presented here, shows no kinematic difference in rotation amplitude, rotation axis, and velocity dispersion between the halo of NGC 5128, determined from over $\sim340$ of its globular clusters, and those of the Centaurus group as a whole. These results suggest NGC 5128 could be behaving in part as the inner component to the galaxy group, and could have begun as a large initial seed galaxy, gradually built up by minor mergers and satellite accretions, consistent with simple cold dark matter models. The mass and mass-to-light ratios in the B-band, corrected for projection effects, are determined to be $(1.3\pm0.5) \times 10^{12}$ M_{\sun} and $52\pm22$ M_{\sun}/L_{\sun} for NGC 5128 out to a galactocentric radius of 45 kpc, and $(9.2\pm3.0) \times 10^{12}$ M_{\sun} and $153\pm50$ M_{\sun}/L_{\sun} for the Centaurus group, consistent with previous studies.Comment: 14 pages, 3 tables, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in A