Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
The Christian life is full of ironies. Lots of diversity has occurred during the last 2,000 years. Some have done reasonably well, while dissing the entire O.T. The LRC are not the only folks to dismiss James; e.g. Luther said James was the "straw epistle, only good for burning."
I do understand, however, that these anomalies are difficult for you to grasp. All I can offer is that the Knower of hearts has a bigger heart than most of us, and oftentimes He overlooks contradictory and "irreconcilable differences."
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That Luther did not like James does not answer the question. And it does not exonerate Lee. And just punting it all to the "Knower of hearts" does not make it OK.
In fact, as I read through some commentaries on 1 Timothy, generally looking at the area in question as well as the whole of the first chapter, I see that most understand "God's economy" as part of a larger phrase rather than as its own "nugget." And some even use the term "dispensing," but not in the way that Lee did. All see this as concerning the gospel of salvation (which is entirely by faith) and not sanctification (in which we actually must do more than just believe).
And when you trot out your "Knower of hearts" thing, it would appear that you are speaking of how God will deal with the people who are learning under the regime that teaches such a peculiar definition of "God's economy" and then uses that definition to write off parts of the Bible they claim to cherish. And I think I agree. God is nowhere near as hard on the ones learning from it as he is on the ones who are teaching it. He does know the hearts of the "average" LRC member. They are just trying to follow they best they know how. That a system of error was slowly pushed on them is not entirely their own fault.
But the ones giving so much push back now did not always take this position. I saw the abject poverty of scriptural basis for what Lee wrote in his book on "God's economy" starting back in 2007. My start of seeing so much error in Lee's actual doctrine of "God's economy" began two and a half years ago when someone decided to do a thread on teachings of Lee that they thought were good. Every time that there was any question as to how something that seemed to say one thing was taken to mean another, there was the finding of some use of phrases like "according to God's economy" or "not knowing God's economy" or "not understanding God's economy" found that was given as justification for the unusual reading, or, in the case of James, outright dismissal of the book as an example of how
not to live the Christian life. When asked to provide a definition of "God's economy" that could wield such massive authority over the reading of scripture as a whole, it was always going to be provided, but never was.
This is the reason that I have such a problem with this little phrase in the context of the LRC. It means something very different for them than it does for us. It is an all-powerful control on scripture, and on the lives of the believer, yet it is such a rare term in scripture that is, in the case of 1 Timothy, not given as a teaching, but as a result. And given the immediately-following verses which are mostly considered to be a sort of an aside, it would appear to be mostly about the message of salvation and not sanctification in 1 Timothy. So using it as a way to redefine the process of sanctification seems to be even more of a stretch.