Biblical Mysteries Essay

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Introduction

Western scholars came up with the term mysticism to describe a special religious phenomenological concept. The term is general utilized today based on a very broad assumption that things found in every religion e.g. the rituals, the practices, the goals, and the experiences are also found in other religions and outside the domain of religion (Keller, 1978; Katz, 1978). The concept of mysticism has fascinated generations. It is a concept that has gathered a lot of attention especially in the modern day world with the increasing influence of eastern religions and the New Age Movement. It has blurred the lines between general mystical experiences and experiences with the true Living God. Nowadays, some experiences of consciousness are regarded as authentic spiritual experiences (Florovsky, 1972). This research proposal is thus an investigation of biblical mysticism and major biblical mysteries found in the Christian bible and how the mysteries found in the Old Testament of the bible are similar to those found in the New Testament.

Background

As per the Catholic Encyclopedia, biblical mysticism commences when an individual commits to love a personal and eternal God and goes beyond the individual’s knowledge of God via the intellect into a sense that is more intuitive. Mysticism considers the initial union between a human soul and God to be via love and contemplation. And then attempts to find the means and processes of explaining the union beyond the love and contemplation. According to the concept, the union is not merely based on an individual’s knowledge of the divinity but on intuition and something deeper (Sauvage, 1911).

For quite a number of centuries, practitioners of eastern religions, gnostics, pantheists, and pagans supported several heretical versions of Mysticism. Most of the versions or forms primarily entailed one emptying themselves into an abyss of nothingness for the purpose of uniting their consciousness with the consciousness of their environment or surroundings. As a response to the pagan take on Mysticism, Christianity proposed a different perspective of Mysticism particularly via the writings of the Church fathers such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Saint Augustine. In Christian Mysticism, Gnostic heresies principles were openly undermined by the Church fathers. The result is that Christian Mysticism does not suggest that every individual through their own acts and will can reveal the hidden meanings or mysteries of the Divine (Murphy & Murphy, 2002). Christianity argues that it is only through faith and reason and because of Divine Grace can humans grasp the mysteries of the Divine and acquire complete union with the Living God (Sauvage, 1911). So there are differences between the pagan view on Mysticism and Christian Mysticism

Significance of the study

This study is informed by the lack of thorough biblical-theological and exegetical examination of mystery, particularly how it reveals the links between the New and the Old Testaments. There are several studies that analyze mystery occurrences in the Christian Bible. However, most of them are brief and do not provide comprehensive explanations of immediate contexts (Beale & Gladd, 2014). In contrast, quite a number of monographs exist on mystery regarded certain themes and books and are usually more exegetically inclined.

The significance of this particular study is that it seeks to fill the void between studies and the monographs by particularly paying attention to the context. This study seeks to identify and explain every occurrence of mystery via concentrating on the quotations and allusions that appear in the Old Testament alongside the occurrences.

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Simply put, this study is an attempt to analyze the Old Testament allusions and quotations to reveal and explain mysteries in this section of the Christian Bible (Addington, 1969; Beale & Gladd, 2014). A significant part of this study will be to find out if the New Testament perspective of mystery with the background of the Old Testament is the best approach of understanding mystery.

Literature review 

The Church education or instruction on mysticism is one that has resulted in the reconciliation of the debate between heretical mysticism and Christian mysticism. This is because it proclaims that human beings can only reach divinity or God via analytical knowledge or reason and that whatever human beings do not know via natural reason or logic, they can know via faith and revelation. And that whatever human beings cannot get by their own natural abilities they can get via God’s grace and hence through grace God…

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…of different works and their findings usually provides greater understanding on issues and provide clarifications in areas that different authors might have different conclusions on.

With regards to biblical mysteries, each selected literature work will be taken into account as one piece of many and used to provide an explanation, an analysis, criticism, and/ or reflection. The end result will be a review that comprehensively details and analyzes bible mysteries and their contexts and offers a cumulative viewpoint on the topic.

The advantages of utilizing a systematic review method are quite many. The method helps to show if findings can be generalized in some way or if they vary significantly in some aspect. A systematic review also has more precision and power in approximating effects and risks according to Mulrow (1994). With its explicit method, a systematic review can also reduce bias and boost the accuracy and reliability of recommendations.

Analysis method

The data gathered via the method proposed in this study will then be subsequently analyzed utilizing the meta-analysis method. The method involves the synthesizing and summarization of data and findings from different studies which investigate a hypothesis in a specific manner (Ahn & Kang, 2018). In addition to the synthesizing of findings and data to offer one estimate of effect, the meta-analysis method can also help to analyze relevant information such as sample sizes, baseline characteristics, and inclusion criteria for the studies analyzed (Cook, Mulrow & Haynes, 1997).

Limitations of the study

· The author knowledge on bible mysteries may be biased and not necessarily the accepted reflection.

· The systematic review may be conducted poorly resulting in personal opinions being taken as facts resulting in poor validity and reliability.

· A number of literature works will be aggregated for the study. Poor aggregation could drown some important effects.

· The systematic review findings could end up not being in agreement with findings from more reliable larger scale research.

Study validity

Several things threaten the validity the study at different stages (Cooper, 1998). For example, the accuracy and quality of information gathered from the review of literature could affect the study’s accuracy and quality. It….....

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