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Originally Posted by Trapped
Isaiah 63:16, which Lee mentions, is speaking of a father to a whole people, which strikes me as similar to Washington being the father of America. I also don't read Isaiah 64:8 to refer to the father of the Godhead.
I just can't get on board with the Son is the Father.
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One thing that helped me was a commentary which showed that people gave their children names with "God" in them. That does not, of course, mean that the child is God, or has the attributes of the name in full, but that the child rather points to some aspect of the Source of all good.
A lot of names had "el" in them, meaning "God". But that person ( or angel - "Gabri-el" or "Micha-el" - was not God.) So if you had a name like "the Father is eternal" it didn't mean that you yourself were the eternal Father. One might meet someone on the street who introduced themselves as "the father who is of light" or "Who is like God" and that didn't mean they themselves were the Father, or God.
A larger point worth making, which came to mind in the "Body Christ" or "Corporate Christ" thread, is that every time Christ became something or other in the hands of the ministry of Lee, he became arguably less like the actual Jesus of the gospels. In theological suppositions, Jesus became more and more abstract, as the posited Pneumatic Christ, the Intensified Christ, the Body Christ and so forth.
Yet the actual Jesus "who went around doing good", as his close associate Peter told those in Cornelius' house... well we had little use for "dead works" in the LC. The Jesus who taught to "give to those who have no means to repay you in this age" - we had other teachings in the LC. Don't waste your time, we were told in the FTTA, rather go after "good building material." The Jesus who was no respecter of persons (also echoed in James' writings, later) was superseded by a system, a Corporate Christ, built on nothing but respecting men (not women - their time was in the 1920s and 30s). "Can we honour our brother too much" asked one leader (who was ejected years later for not showing sufficient honour to the replacement Top Dog in Anaheim).
It became a farcical system holding to abstract ideals and teachings but bearing little resemblance in any actuality to the person whose life, teachings, journey, behaviours, death, and resurrection started it all. The system behind the abstractions became little different from the worst of the "Christanity" it so loudly and constantly despised. That was the real process, the real becoming.