[OBW]

Freedom,

I agree with you that proving every false teaching as wrong is problematic because the scripture does not deal with every thought that a man could have in detail. I have come to realize that there are many things that are taught by all kinds of Christian teachers that could be true, but for which there is nothing but conjecture. The difference between what many of them teach and what Lee and other leaders of fanatical, exclusivist groups teach is in the importance given to the teaching.

There is many a sermon that takes what is there and extrapolates beyond the reasonable bounds of the text, yet the result is nothing more than a word of advice for living, or maybe a little to much outward regulation. But those who do as Nee and Lee did make assertions that tear at the very fabric of the Christian life. They move beyond a few "what ifs" past the text and instead change it from what the words actually spoken say and on to something else.

In some cases, I can honestly say that we may ultimately discover that they were right on some things because they simply taught into a vacuum and managed to guess rightly. But the problem is that with what is given, they have no basis for claiming that it is true, therefore no basis for saying it is more than a good idea.

And the problem, as you have noted, is not that you can prove them wrong, but that you have no basis to establish them as right. It is "beyond what is written" — a place that Paul warns about in 1 Cor 4. So when you read whatever verse that Nee or Lee used to get to their novel teaching and they say something like "this means X" or "this cannot mean that because of teaching Y" then you have to ask how it is that something that is not within the context of the passages being read can cause clear words to cease to be clear.

This is decoder-ring theology. You can no longer trust that your ability to read is of any use. I admit that things that are hidden in metaphors or parables may not be a simple as a straight declaration in plain words, but even those are given in a context in which the purpose is amply clear.

And for Nee and Lee, it is too often that text is not given a place within the whole of its narrative, but is instead separated into bits an pieces which I call fortune cookies and based on a word is presumed to have meaning that comes from elsewhere rather than from the narrative in which it is found. That is how we got the teaching that the last Adam became the Holy Spirit. The verse is not even talking about the Holy Spirit, but Lee comes along and finds "quickening" or "life-giving," declares there can be only one life-giving spirit, and sudden Christ becomes the Holy Spirit.

But the claim that there can only be one life-giving spirit is false. God is spirit, therefore the Father is spirit, the Son is spirit and The Spirit (as a named person, not in reference to his essence) is also spirit. The Son gives life, as does the Father and the Spirit. Lee has made a false statement by equivocating over the word "spirit."

Unfortunately, not all of his errors are so easy to spot. Too often it is that he just makes a statement that X means Y without anything more than the fact that he says so. So how do you refute those? If there is no evidence that it is actually true, then he has gone "beyond what is written" and is outside of the truth that the scripture has provided. The whole sum of truth is not contained in the Bible. But what we need is. Claims of truth beyond that, no matter how good or spiritual it sounds, is beyond what is written and is, at minimum, suspect. It is clearly nothing upon which to demand anything. It cannot be a major teaching or become something of the "core" of the faith.

And it surely does not gain the status of being worthy of the job as the decoder ring to re-read and reinterpret other parts of the Bible.