[Freedom]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

He did not teach deification because he clearly said we are not to be worshiped.

So maybe someone can quote Witness Lee saying we should be worshiped. That is the only real proof that he taught deification.

Evangelical, I have seen posts from both ZNP and testallthings providing quotes indicating that WL did indeed teach deification. That has already been settled.

Your constant reference to whether or not WL taught anyone to worship man is a bit of a red herring. God is synonymous with worship. We worship God. God and worship are inseparable. For WL to say that we can become God, implies he believed in the acceptability of man-worship. There is no way around that. I understood that he spoke against it, but such a disclaimer is negated by the fact that he taught deification. If WL didn’t want to deal with the worship issue, then he shouldn’t have taught deification. It’s that simple.

Originally Posted by Nigel Tomes

No room for ‘semi-Gods,’ ‘partial-Gods,’ or ‘Gods in life & nature, but not the Godhead’
These traits constitute God’s “divine identity.” God is the unique Creator and universal Ruler of all things; hence He alone is worthy of worship. Dr. Bauckham asserts “These definitions of God’s uniqueness drive an absolute difference of kind between God and ‘all things’...and create an essentially binary view of reality.”45 There is no gradient allowing for degrees of deity—one is either capital ‘G’ God (absolutely) or not. There is no room here for ‘semi-Gods,’ ‘partial-Gods,’ ‘half-way Gods,’ or “Gods in life and nature, but not in the Godhead.” George Carraway asks, “How can one be almost God?” He quotes earlier scholars asking, “What kind of God is it, then, who is only God with qualifications? On any legitimate use of terms is any being who is only God with qualifications, not God absolutely, any longer truly God?”46 Along these lines, we ask: Is any human who “is God, but not in the Godhead,” truly God? This binary view of God, Prof. Bauckham asserts, is enshrined in the Old and New Testaments. David Bernard concurs, “The Hebrew Scriptures do not describe God in theoretical or philosophical terms. Yahweh [the LORD] is not an abstract object with attributes but a personal deity with emotions. He is the sole creator, ruler, and savior, and he is the one who acts in both nature and history.”47 The category, “God in life & nature, but not in the Godhead,” is a foreign category from later Greek philosophy, alien to God-inspired Scripture, which dissects the indivisible personal God which Scripture reveals. LSM’s Kerry Robichaux asks, “Can Human Beings Become God?” These scholars answer unequivocally, “No!”

http://localchurchdiscussions.com/vB...ead.php?t=5552