[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

I can see things in a spiritual way. That's one of the ways I look at things.

But it's not the only way.

For the record, I didn't suggest that allegory was the only way to look at things. But it does deal with the cognitive dissonance part. And I prefer allegory to dismissing the scriptural text as "unchristian" and therefore either irrelevant or mistaken.

And I think that I have good company in allegorizing the unseen spiritual realm behind the physical OT stories, in that we can see this with both Paul and the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews (who of course may also have been Paul). Not to mention extensive allegorizations by "church fathers" who followed immediately behind, such as Origen of Alexandria.

So I don't feel that I am too far out on a limb here. But at the same time I can accept that certain independent thinkers such as yourself may not be very attracted to these allegories. As I mentioned in my posts, these interpretations are more intimate and personal ("this is what the text reveals to me"), and are thus somewhat provisional and shouldn't be argued over.

There are plenty of "blank spots" and "grey areas" in scripture where we may strongly feel the LORD speaking things to us in His Christ and of His Christ. But we shouldn't insist that these speakings must now hold in all the churches. And if we don't get any speaking, a la WL in the bulk of the Psalms, we also shouldn't try to discourage others from seeing Christ revealed there. What I argued was that WL was the one being "natural" when he imposed his "fallen concepts" on the text, and he thereby robbed the LC saints of experiencing the speaking Son.