I appreciated your post,
GraceAlone. Yes, let's agree to disagree however, I do agree with much of your post. In recent years I have really come to see just how deeply "Biblicism" (my term) is entrenched in my soul. About a decade ago I was teaching in Lithuania at a very unique Christian university (700 students, almost all from post-Soviet countries) and a young, articulate theology prof and I were having a discussion about a pretty terrible chapel speaker we had just listened to.
"It could have been worse," he said. "He could have been a dispensationalist."
"Wait a second," I said. "I'm a dispensationalist."
He gaped at me. Prior to that moment he hadn't seen me in that camp. And prior to that moment I hadn't realized how hated that camp was by many. It caused me to begin digging into this whole matter. This same professor was also the first person I heard use the term "bibliolatry," the idea that some people turn the Bible itself into an idol. I do remember Witness Lee himself saying, upon the production of the Recovery Version (which he called "The Gold Bar"), "Don't beat people with the Gold Bar." Perhaps Lee was concerned about bibliolatry back then.
Since that time I have been wrestling with this topic. When I say Lee's interpretation of the two trees was brilliant, I am fully aware that it is, after all, just an interpretation. There is a certain irony that, in teaching about the tree of life as the center of everything, one makes the teaching itself the center rather than life.
But my question to myself is, does having a good interpretation even matter? Another theology professor at the same university doubled down on the first professor's worldview saying the Bible is important but should not be the be-all, end-all of church teaching. I know the argument well ... it's basically a Catholic argument though this guy was definitely not a Catholic. So I responded, "So how does a church not simply fall into the book of Judges where everyone does what is right in his own eyes?" He grew quite defensive and told me emphatically he was not suggesting that.
My own dear mother, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher's wife, as she grew older and occasionally began to use some social services like Meals on Wheels and in-house health care (she was taking care of my Down Syndrome brother almost to the end of both their lives) said to me once, "I don't know why we never did anything as a church like this. We were always opposed to social services."
Just this week I was asked to be a guest speaker at a class of adults learning English. They were all Spanish-speakers, all from Latin America, and all there on their own volition and cost (though it was subsidized). I couldn't help but love them. My conservative side, which argues we need border control, was warring with my liberal side, which saw the God-image in the faces of my fellow man.
Sorry so long but your post touches these matters and they're important. The LC fell into the "truth" camp (sorry to use air-quotes; interpret them as you will) just like the Brethren did. I feel quite sure W. Lee saw the danger of this early on, and tried to stave it off at the pass when he came to the U.S. calling his messages "Life-Studies" and using the term "church-life" until it became meaningless dogma. And I think, for the most part, it failed.
I'm beginning to think every "way" fails, save Christ ... and what does that even mean? Maybe that we simply continue forward in whatever way we know at the moment, beating our Bible swords into plowshares somehow.
Okay, enough. I kind of vowed to myself last night to gracefully exit this thread. I've caused enough trouble. But your post did touch me so you're to blame.
