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Originally Posted by zeek
To Witness Lee, Christianity was a negative term. It meant that humans had constructed something other then what God intended for Christ. Lee's often repeated slogan for this was "Every 'anity' (sic) is a vanity." Ergo, for Lee Christianity is a vanity. God's intention was to constitute the church with Christ. Christianity was an aberration.
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And of course what Lee was constructing is what Christ intended ... with The Recovery ... back to the "Christianity" of Jesus. What a joke that to do that would mean making Christianity Jewish again - MCJA - (going back past Paul to James). But I don't recall Lee ever defining to where/when he was recovering back to ... other than one church-one city ... that doesn't go back to Jesus, nor did he intend such a thing ... not according to the gospels.
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Originally Posted by z
While Lee admitted there was an element of Christ in Christianity, as he explained it, in Christianity Christ was mixed with something it shouldn't be. Metaphorically he referred to this as "leaven".
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And that is likely true. The question is, when did the leaven come in? For example, one could wonder if Koine Greek was yeast added to the early lump of Christendom. And of course another possibility for yeast to enter into the early Jesus movement is the many sects that sprang up early on.
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Originally Posted by z
When I was in the local church I was fully indoctrinated into this kind of thinking and I accepted it wholeheartedly. But historical research shows that non-Christ elements such as Hellenism were there from the beginning.
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But if we believe in the sovereignty of God it's obvious that God wanted Jesus, and his movement, to come up during the Hellenic period.
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Originally Posted by z
And, the perfectionism implied in this kind of thinking is Neo-platonic and doesn't seem to be attainable in this world.
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But maybe if we can get everything setup just right, God will pour out the Spirit again, like Pentecost. That Recovery would be up to God ... and given our track record, if it's up to us humans, we ain't never gonna get it right.