Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
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
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Thank you. It's clear.
Regarding my question, I consulted a brother. He said that Lee had his own set of expositions, but that set of expositions often lacked biblical facts and logic and were often crude conclusions and self-righteous opinions. Lee had created many "terms" and many "adjectives" to illustrate his point of view. That repetitive and lengthy vocabulary often makes people fall into his frame before they have a chance to figure it out.
Therefore, the best way is to get out of Lee's frame and hold on to the Bible itself. I agree with him.
As you said, "Unchanged" and "Processed" are incompatible.
As simple as that.