[aron]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

aron,

Yours is a reasonable explanation and your exhortation about safeguards through peer reviews is not missed.

What [Lee] means here is that God spoke most of the Bible through men moved by inspiration of the Holy Spirit using their own words to articulate the inspiration. They were imperfect men as are we all. What they said was often through a filter of their world view. God spoke to men within the context of their human existence.

Actually, I think I get, and mostly agree with this. The Bible was composed by fallible, partly ignorant men. But I would argue that there are at least potentially deep, deep, mystical revelations of Christ there, and that Lee did us a disservice by treating it as if it were a blank spot on a map: "Don't worry, folks, nothing there. Let's move along." In this way he elevated his interpretation above the very word of God itself. And his "move along, folks" wasn't incidental. The Book of Psalms is both the most voluminous book of the OT, and the most cited by the NT. Go through your Psalms Recovery Version sometime and notice the glaring absence of footnotes, and the numerous ones that pan the text as of no value, compared to the ones explicating "divine revelation".

So we get "the context of Lee's human existence", as you put it, vetting the Word of God for us. And I say we were cheated. Or is Lee somehow exempt from the cautionary words you impose on the Biblical authors?

For instance, the book of Enoch is not considered canon. It is not considered Scripture therefore it is not included in the 66 books of the Bible. It is an interesting book but its authenticity is suspect. And yet, Jude quotes the Book of Enoch. So what should we do with that?

I honestly am not sure about Enoch. It is an interesting kind of "grey area" document held to be revelatory by some, perhaps many, of those who composed (and read) our NT. While I acknowledge Enoch as 'suspect' in some ways (authorship & age), I hold that Lee's writings are likewise suspect. Were you to try Lee's works with the same keen-eyed skepticism that you try others, you might be more inclined to agree.

We simply acknowledge the fact that Jude was quoting something according to his understanding at the time. Rejecting the validity of the book of Enoch does not mean we are rejecting the infallibility of Jude and its inclusion in the canon of Scripture.

Likewise, Lee's OT exegeses are not infallible. Human concepts, both "natural" and "fallen", abound.

We hold that all 66 books are the word of God and every word and sentence are infallible canon of Scripture but there is no conflict to embrace the Bible as infallible while acknowledging the bias, the worldview, or the errors that the writers may have scribed.

Lee was also fallible, in behavior, in teaching, and interpretation. As such he is merely one voice among many. And I trust the experiences of the writers of the OT and NT more than the teachings of Lee; if nothing else, simply because they ARE presented warts and all. Lee, by contrast, was presented like "The great and powerful Wizard of Oz", smoke, mirrors, and all. Interesting that in the movie, the "wizard" was a humble itinerant snake oil salesman before he discovered the lucrative business of elevating himself above the awestruck masses. Or am I mis-remembering the movie? I do that sometimes.