Quote:
Originally Posted by VoiceInWilderness
At first WL meant to be filled with the actual Word. Then his writings became "better than" the Word. It is better to be filled with the "interpreted word" or the "digested word" rather than the pure word... There was this unwritten concept that we should just eat the Word but not try to do any of it unless the leadership said to.
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Eventually the "interpreted word" was able to tell us what of the "pure word" was profitable. In the beginning of this thread, I noted that of the first 21 Psalms, maybe 3 of them were held to display God's Christ in some form. (Ps 2,8,16) The rest were at best taking up space. At worst, WL charged them with misleading the reader! As if pleasing God were impossible, and a waste of effort!
Um, sorry, but no... you see, there's this guy, you may have heard of Him, named Jesus. God said, "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I delight". God delighted in His Incarnate Son. Look at Psalm 18 -- "He (the Father) rescued Me (Jesus) because He (the Father) delighted in Me (Jesus)." But to WL, Psalm 18 was just David the vain boaster.
And OUR righteousness is to believe into Jesus the Righteous. But what if your "interpreted word" tells you not to see Jesus, but to either see David (being vain), or the NT believer who is now approved before God? There is a big hole in the middle. Without the incarnated Word the whole thing falls apart, to me. And WL gutted it, effectively, of this vision. I find it inexplicable. Unless he was self-deluded, and threatened by any "revelation" which might arise independently from him, and draw attention away from his ministry.
So you'd get these rather large stretches that passed without comment, save for a reproving note or two from "the oracle". No footnote, no cross-reference, nothing.
And this was now the interpretive standard in the LC. If WL passed over it, how dare any from the rank-and-file find Christ there! So the "interpreted word" effectively shut the door on the "pure word". And Paul's encouragement to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly (via Psalms, notably) got turned on its head: we were either to focus on the "pure word" of Paul's epistles, or the "interpreted word" of Lee. In either case the foundational understanding that Paul and the NT writers had held, from the OT, was erased.
Of course there were other areas, Bretheren-style, where WL teased visions of "Christ" out of every type and shadow the OT offered him. But if he didn't want to find Christ, then his readers/followers were shut off. Because you didn't want to be "independent" and see something "the oracle" didn't see.