Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Hellow. Gnosticism teaches "physical is bad". They also did not the physical nature of Christ. Lee did not teach that. Lee taught that the natural man (that is, the old creation) without the Spirit is bad. In other words, the old "Adamic" creation is negative, the new creation in Christ is positive. This is quite basic teaching from the Bible, I learnt it not from Witness Lee, but from my denominational church.
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Lee taught that natural things were bad. Everything that he could not tie to "the spirit" or "the Spirit" were rejected. Natural affections, or friendships were disdained. Rejected as not of the spirit.
To the Christian, life is of the spirit and of the Spirit. It is not put in the "spiritual" silo or the "worldly" silo based on some arbitrary analysis of whether you are "in spirit" or "not in spirit." And there are no parts of life that are not "in spirit" (or "in the Spirit") for the Christian. There is no need to check your temperature to determine whether God would have you be righteous today. There is no requirement to have a feeling before you do justice or be righteous.
No. Lee did not reject the bodily nature of Jesus. But too much of his theology was based in the false dichotomy of the Gnostics. There is a status of being "in spirit" that is easily turned on and off and only when it is on are you properly Christian (not the way he said it, but effectively so). There is a false dichotomy of the spiritual and the secular or physical.
But in the theology of Jesus, it is the nature of the believer that the whole of life becomes spiritual. It is all either undertaken by a follower or by someone not following. That is the defining difference. Not some artificial "in spirit."