Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
Mike:
>> I reissue the challenge. What did Lee bring us that was worthy of retention that could not be found elsewhere? <<
Mike the only ones that will be challenged by this question are the ones drinking morning Kool-Aid while attending at the HWMRs. And only because they live in a bubble created to keep them from any outside information and contacts.
All of real value in the LC can be found everywhere, and can be carried with anyone anywhere, which is God Himself. The LCers have been deceived into thinking they have a corner on God.
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As usual,
awareness arrives with the gift of brevity. (I am sure I could have done better than my earlier post with about 2 hr of heavy editing, but I just hit "submit" instead.)
I would rephrase Mike's question: What has
any christian teacher brought us that was worthy of retention, which could not be found elsewhere?
For instance, look at the delineation of the human spirit from the soul. I never heard of such a thing, before being under Lee's tutelage in the LCs. Never heard that I had a human spirit. But in the LC's I was told "Exercise your spirit, brother!" and I yelled along with the rest.
Now, was this teaching exclusive to the LCs? No, I found it eventually in Erasmus (written in 1503, in "The Christian Soldier's Handbook"), and Origen (ca. 200 a.d.) in his expositions of Thessalonians 5 and Hebrews 4.
I liked Erasmus the best, simply because the man could write. (If anyone hasn't had the pleasure of going through Erasmus, I recommend his work highly. He could be snide, but I grant that scorn in the right hands is a formidable weapon, and Erasmus wielded his pen against the "powers" that could have ended his career, and even his life.)
But
to whom can I solely ascribe "recovery" of the parts of man? Nobody. And I can't think of
any teacher that alone, apart from the larger christian conversation, has revealed and illuminated some critical aspect of the Word.
Even Luther, who arguably "recovered" justification by faith, was not the first one since the Dark Ages descended to have this realization. He was merely thrust by an accident of history into the forefront of the recovery process. But it was still a group effort(Melanchthon, Calvin, etc), and it occurred over time. And Luther et al's dismissal of "Works" from the salvation scheme led to many attempted amendments, from the Anabaptists to Nee, to try to "get it right", so I even question how much of Luther is 'worthy of retention', as you say. Surely not every word of Luther can stand the test of history.
Lee was just another christian brother with just another part of the puzzle, like everyone else. And his insistance that his puzzle piece was the "topstone" of it all was simply an error needing correction, just like your errors and mine.