Journey Into Divine Intimacy

The following is the relevant passage from my chrismation ceremony: Do you renounce the erroneous  accord of the false Reformed teachers, who do not accept the sacred traditions , do not honor the Saints, and reject prayers on behalf of the departed? Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura . Orthodox believe in a "faith that was once for all delivered" (Jude 3) to the Apostles, that this faith was transmitted both orally and in writing and regardless the mode we are called to "stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), that the Apostles put in a place a practical process for preserving the oral component throughout history ("what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" 2 Timothy 2:2), but that the power behind the preservation is the promise of Christ: "And I tell you, you are Peter, a...

As I thought where to begin to share the differences between my new faith and my old faith, I had an idea. During my chrismation ceremony, I had to publicly and formally renounce certain beliefs. The specific set of beliefs needing to be renounced depended upon  my background. My specific renunciations were tailored to distancing myself from Reformed beliefs since that was where my previous identity lay. My idea is to write a blog post for each thing that I had to renounce in order to illustrate differences that the Orthodox Church considers significant enough to require formal renunciation. The first renunciation was as follows: Do you renounce the false doctrine that the predestination of man to their salvation, or their rejection, is not in accordance with the Divine foreknowledge of their faith and good works, or of their unbelief and ungodliness, but according to some irresistible destiny? I want to start with this renunciation for a number of reasons: First, thi...

Not surprisingly, after I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, I have been asked a question over and over: "So what is so different?" The person who asks this presupposes that there are substantive differences and expects me to enumerate things that they not only understand to be different but also that they consider significant . I usually disappoint this type of person because many of the differences lie exactly in what we consider to be important. If I give a concrete example of a different belief, they will say that that is a peripheral issue and not essential. But if I try to explain the more abstract concept that many differences have to do with what we assign to the essential and peripheral categories, they cannot follow. For example, I can list that I believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and they (probably unconsciously) believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. However, as soon as I say this, the response is, "But that i...