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Originally Posted by aron
... "the seven eyes of the lamb which are the seven spirits of God going into all the earth"... now that makes it all so clear, doesn't it? Thank God for Lee's pat, simplistic explanations; otherwise we might have to struggle with some of these nuanced issues...
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In Genesis 16:13 Hagar told the angel who appeared to her, "You are the God who sees me". Remember the wheels full of eyes, spinning around the throne in Ezekiel's vision?
"Their entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, as were their four wheels." (10:12) Perhaps the "eyes" bring God's sight, or awareness, to the whole universe. They are indeed "going into all the earth"... not a sparrow falls but the Father doesn't know it, remember? All the hairs of your head are numbered, no?
Perhaps in the text we see ministering spirits functioning as God's eyes (and ears and speaking -- they are of course messengers) to effectively connect God, on His throne, to people like Hagar, and to you and to me. In Luke's first chapter, when the Zechariah was doubting Gabriel he was really doubting God, because Gabriel, being an effectively transparent conveyor, did not distort the message but faithfully brought it from source to recipient. God spoke to Zechariah through the messenger who stood in front of His throne (v.19), and who now was at the right side of the incense altar, before the astonished priest (v.11).
But Lee made it "God became a man who became the Holy Spirit who became intensified". So the wheels, the eyes going into all the earth, the faithful angelic messengers bearing glad tidings, the seven spirits before the throne, they all got telescoped into one uniform "processed God". And whatever couldn't get processed by Lee's hermeneutic was explained away or ignored. These unhelpful scriptures were even referred to as "mixed expressions of fallen men", as if they contained little of profit for those seeking God. And such scriptures, as you begin to look at it, constitute much the material in question. I am no systematic theologian, but even I can see this: in order to process God into one neat, homogeneous mass, Lee really had to truncate the scriptural text. Put another way, he didn't use 1 Corinthians 15, or even 1 Corinthians 15:45, for his point, but he needed to use 1 Corinthians 15:45 "b"; otherwise the Holy Spirit might unfortunately remain just that, and likewise so would Jesus Christ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
...if you buy Lee's version of the verse, then you have to assume that Paul is busy talking about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the Trinity other than to consider the body that Jesus received in resurrection. Then suddenly, in the middle of that discussion, Paul had a serious bout of ADHD, shouted "squirrel" and rambled on about how Jesus became the Holy Spirit (without ever actually saying those words) then just as suddenly returned to the discussion he had been carrying on before.
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Lee's theology required that Paul have these "squirrel" moments out of the discussion's context. And then Lee could lever those de-contextualized parts elsewhere like with chapter 1 of John's Apocalypse, in order that things which would otherwise be differentiated (the seven spirits, and Jesus Christ the faithful Witness) could now be merged.
If the reader can ignore all that, it is indeed a nice, neat conceptual scheme. If you like such things, it's attractive because it's so simplistic. Just pray-read the right verses...