Quote:
Originally Posted by Mephibosheth
We now have a context, -that has taken shape as never before- through which we can divine most of what motivated and drove him to write some of his teachings. There also seems to be now, possibly facilitated by the internet, a more frank and free discussion of who the man really was. This can serve to greatly inform anybody seeking to fathom his views. A quick look at Chinese culture, for example, especially as it stood in the first half of the 20th century -his formative years- not as it is today, can serve adequately to explain his dislike of confrontation, or his constant harping on about 'opinions', or even his unwillingness to deal with PL. We sometimes like to tear this man apart, but forget that after all he was Chinese. He was not an American. But this is all relatively common wisdom now.
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Agreed. The context of the original needs to be considered; what might it have meant to the writers, and readers, versus what we might want it to mean today? Don't asssume that the two are so closely aligned as you wish they were.
Case in point: Ecclesia. It seems to escape the "one church per city" folks that the word 'ecclesia' didn't originally mean 'church'. It was extant long before the gospels were spoken, and later written down. It was in the LXX OT, i.e. "in the ecclesia I [Jesus] will sing praises to You [the Father]". What did it mean, before the word 'church' came in to existence? Nee didn't seem to consider this much, perhaps because he had a theme to push and this analysis wouldn't help his cause. What if 'ecclesia' meant something like 'gathering', or 'assembly'? Then you could perforce have multiple meetings in one urban area. Why, wherever two or three were gathered, Christ promised to be there!
But, this wasn't helpful to break free of the Western yoke. Nee was operating in a cultural milieu just a few years removed from the Boxer Rebellion, remember. So the post-Protestant, Bretheren-influenced "church" notion drove the Little Flock to segregate itself. Naturally this was attractive, and was supposedly "blessed" by God in China in the 1920s and 30s; and later Taiwan in the 1950s. But it cannot be overstated that this 20th century meaning might have been quite different from what it meant in the first century CE. We ignored this possibility, to our peril. We got stuck in our current meanings, and were left to wonder why our current experience seemed so different from the scriptures, no matter how much the LSM cheerleaders tried to get us to look away from the obvious.
For a second example, look at the derivation of Lee's teachings, and the ideas he came up with and pushed from the dias. Again, notice how his interpretive focus would nicely align with whatever "move" in the churches he was trying to foster, or suppress. So when the saints were eagerly singing Psalm music that came from the dreaded "denominations" he began to strongly and repeatedly deride the singing of Psalms, saying that they were mostly "low" and "natural" and full of "fallen concepts". Instead, he recommended singing Ephesians and Philippians; you know, the so-called "heart of the divine revelation". No mention that in Ephesians, as elsewhere (i.e. Colossians) Paul had written to the saints to sing the Psalms! (Nor was this idea of a "low" or "natural" OT text alonside a supposedly "revelatory" one ever mentioned in NT exegeses). So you had a teaching that was arguably derived to meet a "current need" in the U.S. "Lord's Recovery" churches in the early 1970s, but to do this, the original word was stripped of all textual and/or comparative understanding. The word now meant whatever we wanted and needed it to mean at that moment. Which is understandable; we all do this. The problem was that it was sold to us as something entirely different. And therein lies the problem.