[aron]

Originally Posted by Ohio

When it came to the OT, Lee followed the old Brethren pattern of "looking for Christ." ... OT scripture was evaluated based on whether Christ could be seen in type, prophecy, figure, etc. Unfortunately, after the 80's came around, Lee had little desire to learn spiritual lessons from the OT characters.

It seems strange to me: if any character was ripe for allegorization it would be the OT character David. He was the great conquering king who slew the monster Goliath. There is so much detail, both in the historical books, and the "inner life" of the character revealed in the Psalms.

Even the failures have Christ nearby. When David writes in Psalm 51 that if God restores him, he'll teach other sinners, you can sense Christ restoring sinners so that they can likewise shepherd others (see Jesus' dialogs with Peter, for example). There is so much "Christ" here to be seen. No wonder the Psalms were cited so extensively by the authors of the NT!

And yet Lee seemed oblivious to all of this.

His commentary on Psalms was part of this fallout. If a Psalm could directly point to Christ, like Psalm 22, then it was extolled as worthwhile according to God's economy. If he could not "find Christ," then the Psalm was worthless according to God's economy, and considered to be merely human sentiment of little value.

There is no indication to me from the writers of the NT that the quotes they used referencing the Christ are the ONLY places where Christ is is to be found. Look at Psalm 69, cited in John chapter 2: "Zeal of Thy house has eaten Me up". John's gospel doesn't indicate that this is the only section of Psalm 69 which reveals Christ. In fact, I would argue the opposite: the citation points the reader back toward a source text. And John's gospel acknowledges the open-ended nature of his work, and it's subject: see e.g. John 16:12, and 21:25. Lee, however, makes perfunctory acknowledgements of the NT citations, with the surrounding text often dismissed as "natural". He won't find Christ unless the NT authors compel him to.

WL really believed that his method of interpretation was on the highest plane, and part of his "high peak" ministry of his final years. He truly believed that he had culminated and consummated the NT ministry, and he himself had grown to such a stage that he could now evaluate and rate all the passages of the Bible.

Yes; his template allowed him to parse the Bible. It really was superior to the scriptures themselves, which could be dismissed as the uninspired work of fallen man, rather than the inspired word of God. But who before Lee with his "NT Economy" template ever disparaged the scriptures thusly? Paul wrote to Timothy that "All scripture is God-breathed and profitable..."; who besides Lee cut off such extensive sections as unprofitable?