Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Miletus
God's Economy
1Timothy 1:3-4 says: Even as I exhorted you... to remain in Ephesus in order that you might charge certain ones not to teach different things nor to give heed to myths and unending genealogies, which produce questionings rather than God's economy, which is in faith.
Was not Brother Witness Lee just echoing what the Bible is saying, as what Brother Martin Luther did?
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Actually, no.
Paul, where were you when this very topic was resurrected on the BARM last Fall? When Matt brought the old theological and general debates forward? I took the time to read some of that old worn tome of Lee's, The Economy of God (TEOG), and I found it amazingly wanting. As cityonahill has already pointed out, Lee picked one of many meanings for the Greek word that he said was simply economy. And he spent paragraph after paragraph using logic error after logic error to get to the conclusion that God's economy is just dispensing.
Besides that, he was so forceful that Paul was saying to teach God's economy. Actually, the verse does not say that at all. It says to not teach different things. Those different things produced questionings. But the teachings that were not "different"
produced God's economy, or administration, etc. The teachings were not the administration or economy. But the result of the teachings was a Christian life and Christian community that operated God's way, that displayed the fullness of God.
As cityonahill has further pointed out, Lee's simplistic definition of "God's economy" is not supported by scripture. But it is Lee's filter for the rest of scripture and is therefore one of the main sources of his errors. And there are many.