Quote:
Originally Posted by Bible-believer
They teach
"The Bible reveals that God is immutable in His essence and that God has been processed in His economy. As the processed God, the Triune God has passed through crucial and interdependent steps in the divine economy in order to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people…God’s process ultimately is related to becoming flesh through incarnation and becoming the life-giving Spirit through resurrection."
Our Unchanging, Processed God
“the Christ in whom we believe is the center of the Triune God.” Because of this, “the Triune God became mingled with man… He is not only the Triune God but also a man… He is the Triune God mingled with man. Therefore, He is the Triune God-man."
Witness Lee, The All-Inclusive Spirit of Christ
(Los Angeles: The Stream Publishers, 1969), pp. 8-11
It's like in this process is the Triune God becoming flesh. Jesus Christ is not the Second Person of the Trinity. Instead, “the Christ in whom we believe is the center of the Triune God.” It's like in this process is Jesus, the Triune God-man becoming the Spirit. If so, does it means they are not separate "three Persons", but just one? If so, does it means they are not separate "three Persons", but just one? and if so, is the teaching of Triune God the same as the Trinity?
Maybe I didn't make myself clear on this matter, but you can see how confused I am about this teaching.
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Hopefully I can squeeze this post in before the thread is closed. I had intended to circle back to your sentence that "It's like in this process is Jesus, the Triune God-man becoming the Spirit" but hadn't gotten the chance to yet.
My first thought is about the first excerpt you included from Lee's
Our Unchanging, Processed God. Notice that Lee deftly says that God is "unchanging" and also "processed".
This doesn't work. To process something by definition means it undergoes a change. Lee gets around it by saying God is unchanging in His essence but processed in His economy......but.......huh? To me, this is like saying I'm faithfully married when my eyes are open, but commit adultery when my eyes are closed, and yet try to claim that I'm faithfully married the whole time. It's an irreconcilable contradiction.
God is God. He just is. Inside of time, outside of time, in His essence, in His economy. He is unchanging. He cannot be unchanging in His essence while be changing in His economy and still be said to be the God who does not change.
So that's my first thought about Lee's assertion that God became Jesus who became the life-giving Spirit. The Bible is false if Lee's assertion is true. "Become" means change. But God is unchanging.
Many people inside and out of the church have tried to take Lee or the ministry to task about that teaching because it's clearly modalistic, but Lee would just speak out of the other side of his mouth and claim the that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are ever co-existing and eternal even though he also taught they successively became each other.....both of which can't be true.......and that is not the sign of someone speaking the truth of God.
My other thought was about last part of that excerpt about becoming the life-giving Spirit. This has been discussed in detail very well in several other threads somewhere on the forum, but we have to look at 1 Corinthians 15 to see how badly Lee bungled this teaching.
Of course, 1 Corinthians 15:45 is,
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being” ; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Witness Lee tried to say that there is only one Spirit that gives life - the Holy Spirit, and so the life-giving spirit in this verse could only be the Holy Spirit.
If I remember right, He called everyone else heretical for even thinking that the life-giving Spirit could be something other than the Holy Spirit. Two Spirits! How absurd! he said.
But as you said earlier in this thread, a text without context is a pretext (as well as oftentimes a prooftext), and the context of 1 Corinthians 15 is about what kind of resurrected body we will have. The chapter very clearly contrasts our current natural bodies with our future resurrected spiritual bodies. Since Jesus was the first one to resurrect with a spiritual body, and Jesus is the one through whom we have eternal life, and Jesus is the life, He is therefore a "life-giving spirit" (not the Holy Spirit).
It's really that simple.
God is Spirit. Jesus resurrected with a spiritual body. We have the Holy Spirit. There's a lot of spiritual things going on in the unseen, spiritual realm. We can speak of a spirit and not be bound to mean the Holy Spirit every time.
So God did not become Jesus who became the life-giving Spirit. Lee was wrong here too. Shocker.
Hopefully that helps address some of the confusion you initially posted about.
Trapped