Protestant Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy:Questions.

[AMM]

How do they feel about you converting? Are they OK with it?

They could have been more on-board, but they weren't entirely opposed. I'm not kicked out of the house or anything! I think their biggest concern is that I converted too fast (2 years inquiring, 8-9 month catechumen period before I was chrismated) and will regret it later.

 

[Knee V]

1) I was introduced to the idea of early Christianity by the Catholics, and spent some time examining writings that I could find from the 1st and 2nd century. I eventually (and it took some time) decided to join the RCC, having been Reformed. I decided that to intellectually honest I had to hear the Orthodox out. It was primarily the issue of the Papacy that made me begin to consider Orthodoxy, instead of Catholicism, to be the continuation of the early Church.

2) There were never any specific teachings per se that I struggled with. What I struggled with was learning to un-think my previous Reformed thinking. While I trusted the Church and accepted what she had to say, I didn't understand how the read the Scriptures - particularly St Paul - and understand what they meant in an Orthodox light. It took about a decade of being Orthodox to learn how to read many passages of Scripture and understand why the Church understands those passages the it does, and to understand why the Reformed understanding is wrong.

Many of the stereotypical hangups for Protestants were never an issue for me. Things like Mary, the Saints, icons, praying for the dead, confession, etc, all felt very natural to me.

3) My parish at the time of my conversion was an hour drive from me. It didn't bother me though.

4) I think I covered that in my first paragraph.

5) I was received via chrismation.

6) The thing that sealed the deal was attending my first Liturgy. I had spend months reading about it and becoming academically convinced that it was the right move, but it was the Liturgy itself that fully drew me in.

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy?
2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with?
3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel?
4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism?
5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated?
6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO?(Yeah I know the Holy Spirit but....)


RCC converts to EO can chime in too.

 

[LizaMarie]

1) I was introduced to the idea of early Christianity by the Catholics, and spent some time examining writings that I could find from the 1st and 2nd century. I eventually (and it took some time) decided to join the RCC, having been Reformed. I decided that to intellectually honest I had to hear the Orthodox out. It was primarily the issue of the Papacy that made me begin to consider Orthodoxy, instead of Catholicism, to be the continuation of the early Church.

2) There were never any specific teachings per se that I struggled with. What I struggled with was learning to un-think my previous Reformed thinking. While I trusted the Church and accepted what she had to say, I didn't understand how the read the Scriptures - particularly St Paul - and understand what they meant in an Orthodox light. It took about a decade of being Orthodox to learn how to read many passages of Scripture and understand why the Church understands those passages the it does, and to understand why the Reformed understanding is wrong.

Many of the stereotypical hangups for Protestants were never an issue for me. Things like Mary, the Saints, icons, praying for the dead, confession, etc, all felt very natural to me.

3) My parish at the time of my conversion was an hour drive from me. It didn't bother me though.

4) I think I covered that in my first paragraph.

5) I was received via chrismation.

6) The thing that sealed the deal was attending my first Liturgy. I had spend months reading about it and becoming academically convinced that it was the right move, but it was the Liturgy itself that fully drew me in.

My brother and his wife are Reformed. He and I were raised Lutheran. Actually as a WELS Lutheran I am very- monergistic? Is that the term? Somewhat similar to the Reformed in a way though there are differences between Calvinism and Lutheranism.
So yes, my understanding of original sin and the idea of synergism as in Orthodoxy and even the RCC are going to be a hurdle for me.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

Theologically, total depravity and monoergism was my final barrier. In +Kallistos Ware's Orthodox Church (or Way, I cant remember), he says that the west sees that man was created perfectly, where as the east sees that man was created with the potential to become perfect, i.e. what if Adam and Eve had eaten from the Tree of Life. So one problem that is out there for the west is, if man was created perfect, then how could he fall? Therefore the fall in the west is from perfection to total depravity. The east sees the fall not as far because man wasnt "complete". (Yes, before everyone jumps on me, I will admit I am paraphrasing +Kallistos poorly from memory). As for monergism, the issue here is that the west tries to define everything, so in Lutheran theology, man can only resist the Spirit but upon conversion, he does co-operate. This also is that man cant choose God voluntarily because he is totally depraved. As I grew more Eastern, I personally saw that if man is totally depraved then he is no better than the fallen angels and therefore beyond salvation.

 

[LizaMarie]

Theologically, total depravity and monoergism was my final barrier. In +Kallistos Ware's Orthodox Church (or Way, I cant remember), he says that the west sees that man was created perfectly, where as the east sees that man was created with the potential to become perfect, i.e. what if Adam and Eve had eaten from the Tree of Life. So one problem that is out there for the west is, if man was created perfect, then how could he fall? Therefore the fall in the west is from perfection to total depravity. The east sees the fall not as far because man wasnt "complete". (Yes, before everyone jumps on me, I will admit I am paraphrasing +Kallistos poorly from memory). As for monergism, the issue here is that the west tries to define everything, so in Lutheran theology, man can only resist the Spirit but upon conversion, he does co-operate. This also is that man cant choose God voluntarily because he is totally depraved. As I grew more Eastern, I personally saw that if man is totally depraved then he is no better than the fallen angels and therefore beyond salvation.

Yes.. You explained it well. To be fair, I do believe the RCC also rejects the idea of total depravity and are more- synergistic? (sp). Protestants have varying degrees of total depravity but I believe they all teach some form of it.

 

[Knee V]

(I was typing this on a computer that often lags and misses letters that I type, so forgive the occasional typo that I may have missed.)

I was PCA and never Lutheran, so I am not familiar with the nuances of the differences between standard Presbyterian models and Lutheran models. I'd read The Bondage of the Will many years ago, so I at least have a basic understanding of Luther's position, whether that is the standard Lutheran postition or not (although it seemed to perfectly jive with the Presbyterian/Reformed view).

As to your point about monergism/synergism and original sin, I will express my own observations about those doctrines and how they relate to Orthodoxy (so this is not necessarily the official Orthodox view, although in my own opinion I believe they accurately reflect the Orthodox view, but again, they are just my own thoughts).

With original sin/total depravity (while I realize that those two are not techincally the same thing, I will lump them together under the broader category of "the Reformed description of mankind's condition"), I believe that it is particularly Christologically problematic. The Reformed view of man and sin is often characterized by this adage: "I am not a sinner because I sin; I sin because I am a sinner." In other words, everything man does is sinful, and that is because it is man's very nature to [only] sin, and it is that sinful nature which governs man's sinfulness. Just as a bird flies and eats worms because it possesses "bird nature", and just as a fish lives in water and breathes through gills because it possesses "fish nature", likewise man sins because man's nature is "sin nature". While Adam was created with one kind of nature that didn't drive him to necessarily sin, that nature changed after he fell to a different nature altogether, which is as different from originally-created human nature as it is from bird nature or fish nature.

The problem with this is that it describes sinning or not sinning as a function of nature. Christ, however, did not sin. According to the Reformed view, Christ did not possess fallen human nature. And since, in the Reformed view, fallen human nature and unfallen human nature are two completely separate and different natures, we are left with a scenario wherein God becomes "flesh", but not the same flesh that we have. He did not become what we are. He became a different kind of creature with a different kind of nature. As such, in that model, the Incarnation is destroyed.

Whatever we may say about man's sinfulness and why we sin and why Christ didn't sin, it cannot be because our nature changed from one kind to another. Human nature is human nature, and we and Christ possess the exact same human nature, otherwise there is no Incarnation, no Gospel, and no salvation.

As for Monergism vs Synergism, this also has serious Christological ramifications.

Orthodox theology, in pretty much all things, always starts with the Person of Christ. Who He is is the foundation of all of theology, and it is no different in the Orthodox aproach to anthropology and soteriology.

Christ is fully 100% God and fully 100% man, both natures being united together in one Person, without confusing or dividing those natures, and with neither nature adding to nor subtracting from the other. He is not zero-sum; he is not 50% God and 50% man. Each nature is complete and total, and His Person is fully both.

Christ Himself is our salvation. Our salvation is not simply what He did, as what He did is an outpouring of Who He is. He is our salvation, and He is what our salvation fundamentally is. As Christ is 100% God and 100% man, so too our salvation is 100% the work of God and 100% the work of man. Just as with Christ's Person, our salvation is not zero-sum. It is not 50% God and 50% man, or 99% God and 1% man, or even 100% God and 0% man, nor any other combination of numbers which add up to 100. Our salvation, like Christ, is 100% God and 100% man. That is what true Synergism is, and that is what we mean when we speak of it. St Paul perfectly sums up Synergism when he says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling [100% man], for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure [100% God]."

However, this also works the other way around. Since what we say about Christ is what we say about salvation, what we say about salvation is what we say about Christ. If we say that we believe in a salvation that is 100% the working of God and 0% the working of man, then we are proclaiming a Christ who is 100% God and 0% man. That, too, destroys the Incarnation. It is the mirror image or shadow of Monophysitism, and it proclaims a Christ whose humanity is an illusion, or who never became man in the first place.

I hope that doesn't come across as overly polemical or confrontational. I simply wish to express why I believe those teachings are fundamentally wrong at their core.

My brother and his wife are Reformed. He and I were raised Lutheran. Actually as a WELS Lutheran I am very- monergistic? Is that the term? Somewhat similar to the Reformed in a way though there are differences between Calvinism and Lutheranism.
So yes, my understanding of original sin and the idea of synergism as in Orthodoxy and even the RCC are going to be a hurdle for me.

 

[Ignatius21]

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy?

I came out of a Calvinist background, and a church culture that valued study and debate. And at the time I was a late-20s guy who fit in with other late-20s guys who made a sport out of trying to best each other in nuanced debates over topics that really didn't matter, but it was very engaging. I blundered into Orthodoxy at a Greek festival (how stereotypical, right?) and took a tour of the church. Having spent years convincing myself of why Rome, Lutherans, Arminians and Anglicans were WRONG, I saw EO as a weird mashup of other WRONG denominations, just with better beards. So I walked out with a new mission to learn as much as I could about this new WRONG sect, so that I could -- I don't know what. Argue with new people, I guess. It's how I landed on this forum back in 2010. I spent many months debating through Romans with a very well educated forum member here. My plan was to clobber him with Romans 9 and make him Calvinist. Sadly, I had converted to Orthodoxy before we'd made it past Chapter 3

2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with?

The hinge in my thinking was on the relation between scripture and tradition. I struggled with the notion that one could believe, much less mandate, any teaching that wasn't "found in Scripture." What finally dawned on me was that no Protestant "just reads Scripture" or "lets it speak for itself." Protestant traditions are exactly that -- traditions -- and they do not hold beliefs "based on the Bible," but rather "based on the Bible as interpreted through the lens of their particular traditions about interpreting the Bible." Suddenly, many more options were on the table.

I guess the traditions about Mary were the hardest to come to grips with, again because so many of them clearly are not found in the Bible as interpreted literally -- really, there's very little written of her at all -- and historically the beliefs about Mary grew and evolved over time. I still cannot get my head around the idea that "The entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple" is a major feast on the same level as Pentecost. The celebration of this has (so far as I can tell) a rather vague origin in history, although it came to be almost universally held. It teaches that Mary went into not just the Temple, but the Holy of Holies. Could it have happened? I dunno, maybe, but it's very hard to believe. Harder still was a lecture by my favorite Orthodox teacher, Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory, teaching that she clearly could not have been allowed into the Holy of Holies, and so we must interpret the feast day theologically and not literally/historically. That wreaks havoc on my brain, because it would seem to allow that same liberty with Pentecost, Christmas and other major feasts. If it's not important whether she literally went into the temple as a little girl, then is it also not important whether Jesus literally was born of a virgin, so long as you get the theology right? So there you have it. That one feast day is still very difficult for me to understand. Everything else pretty much clicked into place.

3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel?

Thankfully we were blessed with an all-English OCA parish 15 minutes away, made up largely of other converts, and with cradle EO who are very welcoming and thrilled to see people coming into the church. I know it is not this way in many ethnic parishes, where new converts can sometimes be seen almost like invaders, and people are sometimes told things like "you cannot be truly Orthodox if you aren't from the Old Country..."

4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism?

It would take me volumes to answer this one, but basically, Protestantism IS Roman Catholicism, just kinda put sideways. They like to see each other as opposites, but really, Protestantism is kind of like the rebellious kid who moved out of his parent's house, moved in across the street, and thinks he's independent. I mean no insult to Protestantism and I know it sounds flippant, but they are still conjoined, and were Catholicism to disappear tomorrow, Protestantism would cease to have a definition. Its traditions are too tightly bound up with rejections of specific, medieval Roman doctrines. The roots of what led to the Reformation were already present hundreds of years earlier, and while Catholicism looks and smells like Orthodoxy (not so much anymore, but certainly did) in its rituals, it's tremendously different beneath. The Reformation was not really a schism within Western Christianity, but a schism within western *scholasticism* and that is probably the root of why East and West went down such different paths.

5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated?

There is no "rebaptism," there is only one baptism, and mine from my protestant roots was accepted because it was done in the name of the Holy Trinity. I was chrismated when I became Orthodox.

6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO?(Yeah I know the Holy Spirit but....)

There really wasn't just any one thing. Once my thinking on Scripture and Tradition had fundamentally shifted, there was NO WAY BACK into Protestantism, and never will be. After a year of visiting, the Liturgy had become so familiar that I knew I had to be there as often as I could, and my first Pascha service sealed that deal.

 

[LizaMarie]

I came out of a Calvinist background, and a church culture that valued study and debate. And at the time I was a late-20s guy who fit in with other late-20s guys who made a sport out of trying to best each other in nuanced debates over topics that really didn't matter, but it was very engaging. I blundered into Orthodoxy at a Greek festival (how stereotypical, right?) and took a tour of the church. Having spent years convincing myself of why Rome, Lutherans, Arminians and Anglicans were WRONG, I saw EO as a weird mashup of other WRONG denominations, just with better beards. So I walked out with a new mission to learn as much as I could about this new WRONG sect, so that I could -- I don't know what. Argue with new people, I guess. It's how I landed on this forum back in 2010. I spent many months debating through Romans with a very well educated forum member here. My plan was to clobber him with Romans 9 and make him Calvinist. Sadly, I had converted to Orthodoxy before we'd made it past Chapter 3



The hinge in my thinking was on the relation between scripture and tradition. I struggled with the notion that one could believe, much less mandate, any teaching that wasn't "found in Scripture." What finally dawned on me was that no Protestant "just reads Scripture" or "lets it speak for itself." Protestant traditions are exactly that -- traditions -- and they do not hold beliefs "based on the Bible," but rather "based on the Bible as interpreted through the lens of their particular traditions about interpreting the Bible." Suddenly, many more options were on the table.

I guess the traditions about Mary were the hardest to come to grips with, again because so many of them clearly are not found in the Bible as interpreted literally -- really, there's very little written of her at all -- and historically the beliefs about Mary grew and evolved over time. I still cannot get my head around the idea that "The entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple" is a major feast on the same level as Pentecost. The celebration of this has (so far as I can tell) a rather vague origin in history, although it came to be almost universally held. It teaches that Mary went into not just the Temple, but the Holy of Holies. Could it have happened? I dunno, maybe, but it's very hard to believe. Harder still was a lecture by my favorite Orthodox teacher, Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory, teaching that she clearly could not have been allowed into the Holy of Holies, and so we must interpret the feast day theologically and not literally/historically. That wreaks havoc on my brain, because it would seem to allow that same liberty with Pentecost, Christmas and other major feasts. If it's not important whether she literally went into the temple as a little girl, then is it also not important whether Jesus literally was born of a virgin, so long as you get the theology right? So there you have it. That one feast day is still very difficult for me to understand. Everything else pretty much clicked into place.



Thankfully we were blessed with an all-English OCA parish 15 minutes away, made up largely of other converts, and with cradle EO who are very welcoming and thrilled to see people coming into the church. I know it is not this way in many ethnic parishes, where new converts can sometimes be seen almost like invaders, and people are sometimes told things like "you cannot be truly Orthodox if you aren't from the Old Country..."



It would take me volumes to answer this one, but basically, Protestantism IS Roman Catholicism, just kinda put sideways. They like to see each other as opposites, but really, Protestantism is kind of like the rebellious kid who moved out of his parent's house, moved in across the street, and thinks he's independent. I mean no insult to Protestantism and I know it sounds flippant, but they are still conjoined, and were Catholicism to disappear tomorrow, Protestantism would cease to have a definition. Its traditions are too tightly bound up with rejections of specific, medieval Roman doctrines. The roots of what led to the Reformation were already present hundreds of years earlier, and while Catholicism looks and smells like Orthodoxy (not so much anymore, but certainly did) in its rituals, it's tremendously different beneath. The Reformation was not really a schism within Western Christianity, but a schism within western *scholasticism* and that is probably the root of why East and West went down such different paths.



There is no "rebaptism," there is only one baptism, and mine from my protestant roots was accepted because it was done in the name of the Holy Trinity. I was chrismated when I became Orthodox.



There really wasn't just any one thing. Once my thinking on Scripture and Tradition had fundamentally shifted, there was NO WAY BACK into Protestantism, and never will be. After a year of visiting, the Liturgy had become so familiar that I knew I had to be there as often as I could, and my first Pascha service sealed that deal.

I agree with your number 5. I was Baptized in the late '50's at An evangelical Covenant church-as an infant. They are a split off from the Church of Sweden. My Mom's side were Swedish Immigrants in the late 1800's and came to the U.S. the upper Midwest. I believe it was a valid Trinitarian Baptism.
We were raised LCMS my Mom preferred that to the Covenenant Church. My Dad was nothing but had Catholic and Mormon in his background.

 

[Ignatius21]

The problem with this is that it describes sinning or not sinning as a function of nature. Christ, however, did not sin. According to the Reformed view, Christ did not possess fallen human nature. And since, in the Reformed view, fallen human nature and unfallen human nature are two completely separate and different natures, we are left with a scenario wherein God becomes "flesh", but not the same flesh that we have. He did not become what we are. He became a different kind of creature with a different kind of nature. As such, in that model, the Incarnation is destroyed.

.................

Christ is fully 100% God and fully 100% man, both natures being united together in one Person, without confusing or dividing those natures, and with neither nature adding to nor subtracting from the other. He is not zero-sum; he is not 50% God and 50% man. Each nature is complete and total, and His Person is fully both.

Christ Himself is our salvation. Our salvation is not simply what He did, as what He did is an outpouring of Who He is. He is our salvation, and He is what our salvation fundamentally is. As Christ is 100% God and 100% man, so too our salvation is 100% the work of God and 100% the work of man. Just as with Christ's Person, our salvation is not zero-sum. It is not 50% God and 50% man, or 99% God and 1% man, or even 100% God and 0% man, nor any other combination of numbers which add up to 100. Our salvation, like Christ, is 100% God and 100% man. That is what true Synergism is, and that is what we mean when we speak of it. St Paul perfectly sums up Synergism when he says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling [100% man], for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure [100% God]."

However, this also works the other way around. Since what we say about Christ is what we say about salvation, what we say about salvation is what we say about Christ. If we say that we believe in a salvation that is 100% the working of God and 0% the working of man, then we are proclaiming a Christ who is 100% God and 0% man. That, too, destroys the Incarnation. It is the mirror image or shadow of Monophysitism, and it proclaims a Christ whose humanity is an illusion, or who never became man in the first place.

^^^ THIS STUFF UP HERE ^^^
Monergism was drilled into me in the Presbyterian Church (I was "Orthodox Presbyterian," none of those PCA softies for me!!!) until it almost changed my human nature into something else. That was it. Monergism was the gospel. The Gospel really boils down to "God does 100%!!! Who are you, O man, to cling to that 0.00000001% of the credit for yourself?)

The "zero sum" language used here by Knee-V is exactly spot on. That was how it was presented and understood. I could NOT participate IN ANY WAY in God's work, or else it would "take credit" and subtract from him, making God be less than God. Christ is 100% God and 100% Man. Christ, in a sense, *is* synergy. His human will is in perfect harmony with his divine will, and that essentially is what theosis is for us -- conforming perfectly to the divine will.

Something that has no home in Reformed theology -- and to me was dismissed as "mystical nonsense" -- is the notion of participation. When we do a "good work" we are not just doing something the way God would like us to do it, or how Jesus would do it if he were here himself. It is God doing that good work in and through us -- that's what we mean when we speak of "participating in" the divine life.

Essentially, when I was Reformed, the Incarnation was basically explained almost as a technicality -- God demanded a perfect human sacrifice to deal out infinite punishment, so Jesus had to be man to receive our punishment, but the Incarnation itself has no real saving value other than serving as a runway leading to the cross.

It is an entirely different way of thinking, which is why you will not find any parallel in EO to the monergism you find in Calvinism, and the Protestant "synergy" is also NOT the same as EO synergy. When I was converting, my Presbyterian elders and pastors and friends were constantly attacking Arminian and Weslyan theology because they had no understanding of historic Christian mysticism. They just lumped all forms of synergism into the same heretical bucket because they all "robbed God of his glory" so what was the use in really differentiating among them? Again, it was all that zero-sum stuff.

100% + 100% = 100%. Welcome to Orthodox Math

 

[LizaMarie]

Well, to the above: I'm far from a theologian so I'm not completely sure of the all the differences between Reformed/PCA and Lutheran but we do reject "Tulip" or "double predestination" not sure if those are the beliefs of your former churches. As for Synergism I'm working on it but it's a hurdle for me.
We are all a work in progress I guess!

 

[Jesus4Madrid]

I came out of a Calvinist background, and a church culture that valued study and debate. And at the time I was a late-20s guy who fit in with other late-20s guys who made a sport out of trying to best each other in nuanced debates over topics that really didn't matter, but it was very engaging. I blundered into Orthodoxy at a Greek festival (how stereotypical, right?) and took a tour of the church. Having spent years convincing myself of why Rome, Lutherans, Arminians and Anglicans were WRONG, I saw EO as a weird mashup of other WRONG denominations, just with better beards. So I walked out with a new mission to learn as much as I could about this new WRONG sect, so that I could -- I don't know what. Argue with new people, I guess. It's how I landed on this forum back in 2010. I spent many months debating through Romans with a very well educated forum member here. My plan was to clobber him with Romans 9 and make him Calvinist. Sadly, I had converted to Orthodoxy before we'd made it past Chapter 3



The hinge in my thinking was on the relation between scripture and tradition. I struggled with the notion that one could believe, much less mandate, any teaching that wasn't "found in Scripture." What finally dawned on me was that no Protestant "just reads Scripture" or "lets it speak for itself." Protestant traditions are exactly that -- traditions -- and they do not hold beliefs "based on the Bible," but rather "based on the Bible as interpreted through the lens of their particular traditions about interpreting the Bible." Suddenly, many more options were on the table.

I guess the traditions about Mary were the hardest to come to grips with, again because so many of them clearly are not found in the Bible as interpreted literally -- really, there's very little written of her at all -- and historically the beliefs about Mary grew and evolved over time. I still cannot get my head around the idea that "The entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple" is a major feast on the same level as Pentecost. The celebration of this has (so far as I can tell) a rather vague origin in history, although it came to be almost universally held. It teaches that Mary went into not just the Temple, but the Holy of Holies. Could it have happened? I dunno, maybe, but it's very hard to believe. Harder still was a lecture by my favorite Orthodox teacher, Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory, teaching that she clearly could not have been allowed into the Holy of Holies, and so we must interpret the feast day theologically and not literally/historically. That wreaks havoc on my brain, because it would seem to allow that same liberty with Pentecost, Christmas and other major feasts. If it's not important whether she literally went into the temple as a little girl, then is it also not important whether Jesus literally was born of a virgin, so long as you get the theology right? So there you have it. That one feast day is still very difficult for me to understand. Everything else pretty much clicked into place.



Thankfully we were blessed with an all-English OCA parish 15 minutes away, made up largely of other converts, and with cradle EO who are very welcoming and thrilled to see people coming into the church. I know it is not this way in many ethnic parishes, where new converts can sometimes be seen almost like invaders, and people are sometimes told things like "you cannot be truly Orthodox if you aren't from the Old Country..."



It would take me volumes to answer this one, but basically, Protestantism IS Roman Catholicism, just kinda put sideways. They like to see each other as opposites, but really, Protestantism is kind of like the rebellious kid who moved out of his parent's house, moved in across the street, and thinks he's independent. I mean no insult to Protestantism and I know it sounds flippant, but they are still conjoined, and were Catholicism to disappear tomorrow, Protestantism would cease to have a definition. Its traditions are too tightly bound up with rejections of specific, medieval Roman doctrines. The roots of what led to the Reformation were already present hundreds of years earlier, and while Catholicism looks and smells like Orthodoxy (not so much anymore, but certainly did) in its rituals, it's tremendously different beneath. The Reformation was not really a schism within Western Christianity, but a schism within western *scholasticism* and that is probably the root of why East and West went down such different paths.



There is no "rebaptism," there is only one baptism, and mine from my protestant roots was accepted because it was done in the name of the Holy Trinity. I was chrismated when I became Orthodox.



There really wasn't just any one thing. Once my thinking on Scripture and Tradition had fundamentally shifted, there was NO WAY BACK into Protestantism, and never will be. After a year of visiting, the Liturgy had become so familiar that I knew I had to be there as often as I could, and my first Pascha service sealed that deal.

Thanks for sharing that. You and Knee V have added a lot to this thread.

 

[RobNJ]

Well, to the above: I'm far from a theologian so I'm not completely sure of the all the differences between Reformed/PCA and Lutheran but we do reject "Tulip" or "double predestination" not sure if those are the beliefs of your former churches. As for Synergism I'm working on it but it's a hurdle for me.
We are all a work in progress I guess!

Yup... Presbyterian & Reformed = Calvinist (in my neck of the woods... North NJ, & NY state.. If, in the 1600's to 1800's.. you had Dutch Calvinists move in, you had a Reformed Church. If you had Scottish Calvinists move in, you had a Presbyterian Church). Both believe in TULIP, and Double Predestination. In my Calvinist days (former RCA Elder, here), I my mind, I couldn't find any logic to "Single Predestination".. "IF there IS predestination it MUST be double, God does nothing 'half-way'" ..

Then I started learning about the Orthodox faith, and theology, and realized that Predestination of either kind, doesn't make sense.

 

[Ignatius21]

Well, to the above: I'm far from a theologian so I'm not completely sure of the all the differences between Reformed/PCA and Lutheran but we do reject "Tulip" or "double predestination" not sure if those are the beliefs of your former churches. As for Synergism I'm working on it but it's a hurdle for me.
We are all a work in progress I guess!

Calvinists most definitely hold to double predestination. I never was clear on why "single" predestination makes any sense because if God is specofispeci choosing which men will be saved, he is simultaneously choosing which will be damned, is he not?

"I'm not choosing who will drown, I'm just choosing who to pull onto my boat! The rest of yally are on your own."

I believe that's a distinction without a difference.

 

[Ignatius21]

Calvinists most definitely hold to double predestination. I never was clear on why "single" predestination makes any sense because if God is specofispeci choosing which men will be saved, he is simultaneously choosing which will be damned, is he not?

"I'm not choosing who will drown, I'm just choosing who to pull onto my boat! The rest of yally are on your own."

I believe that's a distinction without a difference.

Please forgive the weird typos....my phone seems to have a mind of its own...

 

[Phronema]

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy?
2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with?
3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel?
4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism?
5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated?
6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO?(Yeah I know the Holy Spirit but....)

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy? I spent 6 months in Turkey, and visited a few ancient Christian sites with churches carved out of rock that had icons, and murals in them from our ancient Christian brothers, and sisters. It caused me begin looking more closely at how those churches came to be as I really enjoy learning about history. Then I found Orthodox chant, and I really enjoy music. After that I became intrigued.

2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with? Not particularly. I wasn't very learned as a Protestant beforehand, and so as a result nothing in Orthodoxy seemed incorrect to me. This is both a bad, and good thing I guess.

3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel? It is fairly near to me. I have to travel about 30 minutes, but it's more than worth it. I love my parish, and it's community. It's Greek, and despite some of the things I've read about Greeks they have been very welcoming to me. Also I'd like to move closer to my parish if I decide to move.

4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism? This is an interesting question for me. I chose Orthodoxy over Catholicism because I really love history, but I did consider becoming Catholic for a brief time. As I did more research I realized that the Orthodox church truly has, in my opinion, kept true to the faith as it was handed down to/by the Apostles. That said, I did grow up Protestant, and did investigate the Catholic church briefly because it was so similar to what I was used to, but the lack of a Tridentine Mass in my local area turned me off completely, and I was investigating the Orthodox church simultaneously. So it ended up an easy decision in the end for me, and I'll never look back.

5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated? This portion hasn't happened yet, and I'm still a catechumen. That said, Father has said I'll likely be chrismated because I was baptised in a trinitarian manner. So, I believe that will be what will happen, but if he thinks I need to be baptised again since I can't produce a baptismal certificate, then I'm okay with whichever he suggests.

6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO? The fullness of the Divine Liturgy grabbed me on the first time. Just as the Russians said who visited Constantinople it's like heaven on Earth. That said, I'm a cautious and observant individual, and so I attended many Divine Liturgies before I finally decided that I was sold on becoming Orthodox. After almost a year of attendance, I've decided that I'll become Orthodox no doubt about it. The people in the parish, and Father Thomas have treated me so well. In addition I've read through a few Orthodox books, and I've really enjoyed them. All in all it's for me, and I'll remain Orthodox until I pass on.

 

[LizaMarie]

Calvinists most definitely hold to double predestination. I never was clear on why "single" predestination makes any sense because if God is specofispeci choosing which men will be saved, he is simultaneously choosing which will be damned, is he not?

"I'm not choosing who will drown, I'm just choosing who to pull onto my boat! The rest of yally are on your own."

I believe that's a distinction without a difference.

This is why my brother and his wife are Reformed despite us growing up LCMS.(her background is Presbyterian)he says he can't understand the Lutheran view looking at it as a grownup. However I just can't agree with the "L" in TULIP or limited atonement. Christ died for all, but not all are going to accept his saving grace. No one is predestined to be damned. They went to RCIA for awhile but dropped out. Went back to the Reformed. Much for the same reasons in an article I saw shared in a thread over on OBOB. (regarding someone who was looking into Catholicism but decided to remain PCA.) They are not now interested in Orthodoxy, when I suggested they look into that.
I have been looking at the RCC but they've got a lot of legalism. Even though there is a lot about the RCC I was initially quite attracted to.

 

[LizaMarie]

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy? I spent 6 months in Turkey, and visited a few ancient Christian sites with churches carved out of rock that had icons, and murals in them from our ancient Christian brothers, and sisters. It caused me begin looking more closely at how those churches came to be as I really enjoy learning about history. Then I found Orthodox chant, and I really enjoy music. After that I became intrigued.

2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with? Not particularly. I wasn't very learned as a Protestant beforehand, and so as a result nothing in Orthodoxy seemed incorrect to me. This is both a bad, and good thing I guess.

3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel? It is fairly near to me. I have to travel about 30 minutes, but it's more than worth it. I love my parish, and it's community. It's Greek, and despite some of the things I've read about Greeks they have been very welcoming to me. Also I'd like to move closer to my parish if I decide to move.

4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism? This is an interesting question for me. I chose Orthodoxy over Catholicism because I really love history, but I did consider becoming Catholic for a brief time. As I did more research I realized that the Orthodox church truly has, in my opinion, kept true to the faith as it was handed down to/by the Apostles. That said, I did grow up Protestant, and did investigate the Catholic church briefly because it was so similar to what I was used to, but the lack of a Tridentine Mass in my local area turned me off completely, and I was investigating the Orthodox church simultaneously. So it ended up an easy decision in the end for me, and I'll never look back.

5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated? This portion hasn't happened yet, and I'm still a catechumen. That said, Father has said I'll likely be chrismated because I was baptised in a trinitarian manner. So, I believe that will be what will happen, but if he thinks I need to be baptised again since I can't produce a baptismal certificate, then I'm okay with whichever he suggests.

6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO? The fullness of the Divine Liturgy grabbed me on the first time. Just as the Russians said who visited Constantinople it's like heaven on Earth. That said, I'm a cautious and observant individual, and so I attended many Divine Liturgies before I finally decided that I was sold on becoming Orthodox. After almost a year of attendance, I've decided that I'll become Orthodox no doubt about it. The people in the parish, and Father Thomas have treated me so well. In addition I've read through a few Orthodox books, and I've really enjoyed them. All in all it's for me, and I'll remain Orthodox until I pass on.

thank you for this!

 

[LizaMarie]

I came out of a Calvinist background, and a church culture that valued study and debate. And at the time I was a late-20s guy who fit in with other late-20s guys who made a sport out of trying to best each other in nuanced debates over topics that really didn't matter, but it was very engaging. I blundered into Orthodoxy at a Greek festival (how stereotypical, right?) and took a tour of the church. Having spent years convincing myself of why Rome, Lutherans, Arminians and Anglicans were WRONG, I saw EO as a weird mashup of other WRONG denominations, just with better beards. So I walked out with a new mission to learn as much as I could about this new WRONG sect, so that I could -- I don't know what. Argue with new people, I guess. It's how I landed on this forum back in 2010. I spent many months debating through Romans with a very well educated forum member here. My plan was to clobber him with Romans 9 and make him Calvinist. Sadly, I had converted to Orthodoxy before we'd made it past Chapter 3



The hinge in my thinking was on the relation between scripture and tradition. I struggled with the notion that one could believe, much less mandate, any teaching that wasn't "found in Scripture." What finally dawned on me was that no Protestant "just reads Scripture" or "lets it speak for itself." Protestant traditions are exactly that -- traditions -- and they do not hold beliefs "based on the Bible," but rather "based on the Bible as interpreted through the lens of their particular traditions about interpreting the Bible." Suddenly, many more options were on the table.

I guess the traditions about Mary were the hardest to come to grips with, again because so many of them clearly are not found in the Bible as interpreted literally -- really, there's very little written of her at all -- and historically the beliefs about Mary grew and evolved over time. I still cannot get my head around the idea that "The entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple" is a major feast on the same level as Pentecost. The celebration of this has (so far as I can tell) a rather vague origin in history, although it came to be almost universally held. It teaches that Mary went into not just the Temple, but the Holy of Holies. Could it have happened? I dunno, maybe, but it's very hard to believe. Harder still was a lecture by my favorite Orthodox teacher, Fr. Thomas Hopko of blessed memory, teaching that she clearly could not have been allowed into the Holy of Holies, and so we must interpret the feast day theologically and not literally/historically. That wreaks havoc on my brain, because it would seem to allow that same liberty with Pentecost, Christmas and other major feasts. If it's not important whether she literally went into the temple as a little girl, then is it also not important whether Jesus literally was born of a virgin, so long as you get the theology right? So there you have it. That one feast day is still very difficult for me to understand. Everything else pretty much clicked into place.



Thankfully we were blessed with an all-English OCA parish 15 minutes away, made up largely of other converts, and with cradle EO who are very welcoming and thrilled to see people coming into the church. I know it is not this way in many ethnic parishes, where new converts can sometimes be seen almost like invaders, and people are sometimes told things like "you cannot be truly Orthodox if you aren't from the Old Country..."



It would take me volumes to answer this one, but basically, Protestantism IS Roman Catholicism, just kinda put sideways. They like to see each other as opposites, but really, Protestantism is kind of like the rebellious kid who moved out of his parent's house, moved in across the street, and thinks he's independent. I mean no insult to Protestantism and I know it sounds flippant, but they are still conjoined, and were Catholicism to disappear tomorrow, Protestantism would cease to have a definition. Its traditions are too tightly bound up with rejections of specific, medieval Roman doctrines. The roots of what led to the Reformation were already present hundreds of years earlier, and while Catholicism looks and smells like Orthodoxy (not so much anymore, but certainly did) in its rituals, it's tremendously different beneath. The Reformation was not really a schism within Western Christianity, but a schism within western *scholasticism* and that is probably the root of why East and West went down such different paths.



There is no "rebaptism," there is only one baptism, and mine from my protestant roots was accepted because it was done in the name of the Holy Trinity. I was chrismated when I became Orthodox.



There really wasn't just any one thing. Once my thinking on Scripture and Tradition had fundamentally shifted, there was NO WAY BACK into Protestantism, and never will be. After a year of visiting, the Liturgy had become so familiar that I knew I had to be there as often as I could, and my first Pascha service sealed that deal.

I rejected Sola Sciptura a long time ago. I agree it is not logical. It's why we have 10,000. different protestant denominations. I guess you could say I'm "Prima Scriptura" lol. I think Scripture takes precedence but there has to be Tradition to interpret it. Yes, I believe in Sacred Tradition. And of course, the Old Testament Hebrews also had oral tradition before their canon was set, just as the Church did. The early Church had writings and the Church set the canon. Sola Scriptura was not a hurdle for me at all. Your example is a good one.

 

[LizaMarie]

Please forgive the weird typos....my phone seems to have a mind of its own...

Mine too.

 

[Markie Boy]

1. What made you consider Eastern Orthodoxy?
2. Were there any EO teachings that you struggled with? Still Struggle with?
3. Did you have an EO parish near you? Did you have to travel?
4. Why did you choose the EO church over Roman Catholicism?
5. Were you rebaptized or just chrismated?
6. What was the final thing that convinced you you had to go EO?(Yeah I know the Holy Spirit but....)


RCC converts to EO can chime in too.

Still working on all this - but I'll try, as I left a Baptist church to Catholicism, and that's where I am at right now:

1. The poor performance of Catholicism. Where I am it's hard to hang on. But once you know Protestantism is built mostly on sand, there's not many places to go.

2. Not yet - but I don't know them all. But I developed a habit of checking Catholic teaching against Orthodoxy. If they agreed I am OK with the Catholic teaching - when they don't, Orthodoxy's view usually seems more historic and makes my head hurt less.

3. No parish near enough to consider - yet. Hour and half - and for me it might as well be ten hours the way things are.

4. I haven't yet on the outside - but feel Eastern inside. Look at how they view Mary and Original Sin - Catholicism - she's preserved from the stain of Original Sin - she is lacking a negative. Eastern - full of grace - has something positive. Catholicism just has this legalistic, darker tone to it.

Am trying to figure how to be Eastern as much as I can.

5. N/A

6. Lack of good leadership is huge now. If you want to be conservative, traditional, and actually stand for something - you may be on your own. They are unable to clean their own house it seems.

Promoting the Charismatic Movement - it's like ratifying that Protestants have something Catholics don't (which may be true) - but pretty much wrecks their claim of the "True Church".

Mandatory celibacy - has cause them to pick from a distorted pool of candidates, and it's literally ruining the Church. But nobody sees this. It's like the house is on fire and they can't see it. For a bunch of guys with Master's degrees they are really slow to see their own mistakes - if they ever do.