Postliberal Christianity

[path_of_one]

Excellent 2 c Luna. I have nothing to add except that you captured my thoughts nearly exactly. I don't think the Mystery is a prophetic foretelling of Christ, nor is the OT just a big build-up toward the climatic point of the Gospels. The entirety of scripture is an expression of the Mystery- the experience of God. And the Mystery continues in scripture because the text itself becomes part of the experience, an invitation to transformation.

[wil]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

Hiya flow, excellent points there. It certainly seems like we are in dire need of some kind of collective awakening.

Don't we think we are in the middle of a collective awakening? maybe this should be another thread...

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by wil

Don't we think we are in the middle of a collective awakening? maybe this should be another thread...

Yes, but I don't think that this is anything new. There have been many upheavals in the collective spiritual consciousness, ebbs and flows. It would be wonderful to think we are actually making progress in this and my worldview is more positive than negative concerning such progress, but I'm not so sure that this is where I can put my ultimate hope. It would be an interesting thread.

luna

[Dondi]

Originally Posted by China Cat

In Christianity we have a conception of what the pre-christian Jewish experience was that heavily colors our understanding of what Jesus means as messiah and savior. We take as fact a Christianized version of what all that stuff in the Torah means based on a very superficial understanding of the material. But I've been talking to Jews and they don't see it the way we do. So, digging down into the layers I'm first confronted with the disparity between Jewish and Christian thought about what the geniune context of the Torah, and the balance of the OT is.

Now I'm intrigued and I wonder what the real history of Judaism is outside of the foundational mythology. I want to know how and why the foundational myths were created. See, that's part of historical context that explains the Bible authors' original intent. So I look for unbiased sources, and I find that the archaeological record doesn't support the historicity of the foundational myths. O.K., so they're myths, and that makes them very powerful in their proper sphere, but it also completely undermines any possible literality in the Jesus story where elements of the Jewish myth are appropriated and used for color, nuance, ambience, or detail.

China Cat,
This is basically a path I took as I stepped back to evaluate just what is it I believe. For I realized a need to explore Christianity from a Jewish perspective rather than the sanitized Gentile version that is common across the major denominations. I, too, have faced seeming irreconsolable differences particularly in regards to Messianic prophesy (read Isaiah 7:14) and Messianic expectations. So I struggle to find harmony with the Jewish Moshiach, as defined in Judaism, and Jesus as the Christ. It certainly throws an unnerving wrench into the machine.

I haven't yet explored fully the archealogical aspects of the problem. Did you happen to catch the documentary "Exodus Decoded"? If so, what did you think about it?