Are you Orthodox Christian?
>>I like to think I’m an Orthodox Christian in union with Rome. My theological leanings are far closer to Eastern Orthodoxy than to the medieval Scholastics.
Eastern Christianity is fundamentally incarnational, and Christology comes first. Mary is important, but she always points the way to Jesus and is subservient to him.
We love who Jesus loved. Martin Luther and the early Protestant Reformers did likewise, but they were protesting, rightly so, against some of the superstitions.
I’ve been around Eastern Christians for about 15 years, and I don’t find the sorts of apparition hunting or obssession with “private revelation” that I see among Latin Catholics.
What I also do love about the Eastern Christian Churches, Eastern Rite Catholic/Orthodox is the love and appriciation of the prayer devotionals called “icons”. In other words, a preview or a view of Heaven on the earth.
“I’ve been around Eastern Christians for about 15 years, and I don’t find the sorts of apparition hunting or obssession with “private revelation” that I see among Latin Catholics.”
What I have difficult time dealing with is those Catholics who go crazy for “social justice” stuff. While it is IMPORTANT to love one’s neighbor as Jesus commands, what troubles me is those Catholics who get into “social justice” stuff that comes very close too or is borderline “politics”.
What screen name were you known by before you came back to Freerepublic as rzman21? I ask because your methodology is very much like a n LDSinc apologist who self-identified as an Aspergers person. He too made long, self-aggrandizing posts and claimed to be a Christian of like mind with the Eastern Orthodoxy over the Roman Traditions. He too was unable to comprehend the reasons for why Once God’s Spirit comes into your dead human spirit, your spirit is alive forever more and God will in no wise leave you to defend your weak faith before the onslaught of demonic forces far superior to your efforts to hold onto your salvation. Delphi User was that previous poster’s screen name, a raving LDSinc apologist who relished stirring up division and creating faith flaws into which he would try to pour the demonic crap of Mormonism backed by his burning bosom testimony.
Actually, according to Trent, it appears special revelation is the way RCs can have assurance of final salvation, that they are one of the elect.
“No one, moreover, so long as he is in this mortal life, ought so far to presume as regards the secret mystery of divine predestination, as to determine for certain that he is assuredly in [Page 40] the number of the predestinate; as if it were true, that he that is justified, either cannot sin any more, or, if he do sin, that he ought to promise himself an assured repentance; for except by special revelation, it cannot be known whom God hath chosen unto Himself.” (Trent, The Sixth Session, CHAPTER XII)