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Originally Posted by JJ
Hundreds of verses with relevant insights elsewhere were totally ignored because “they were from the wrong tree”, according to Lee. Those very verses fill in key matters that could round out and fill in deficiencies in teachings that ultimately led to abuses. God’s mercy, loving kindness, lampooned, Biblical leadership models, good works, helping the poor, orphans, widows, not showing favoritism...
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At one point I learned about esoteric (private) versus exoteric (public) teachings. In the gospels, Jesus taught his disciples privately. He had public utterances, then would pull his disciples aside and go further. See, e.g., Mark 4:34 "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything."
Of course, this continued, post-gospels. There were public utterances, and private conversations, some alluded to in written scripture. And so it remains for us to puzzle out some of the cryptic references, and the variously-placed allusions.
Witness Lee put it this way: "The Bible… does not always give us all the details about a matter in one place. Rather, it reveals a small portion in one place and another portion in another place. We may compare this to a jigsaw puzzle. We do not keep the pieces of a puzzle in a meaningless pile. Rather, we need adequate time and wisdom to put all the pieces together in a significant way. Do not ask the reason that the Lord reveals His mysteries in the divine Word in such a puzzle-like way. This is simply the case." ~WL "The Producing and Building Up of the Church..." p. 19
Of course, church teachers have been doing this for centuries: formulating coherent doctrines from disparate sections of scripture. But what happens when, as
JJ says above, that formulation required the discarding of significant sections of scripture? What happens when that interpretation tells us parts of scripture are "low", some are "fallen", some are "natural concepts", some are "mixed sentiments" and so forth? Instead, in the NT Jesus taught that "every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" and Paul said "all scripture is God-breathed".
Witness Lee's abstract derivations were promoted as "high peaks" while scriptural commands like visiting widows and orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, were denigrated. I heard it in the FTTA: "Don't waste your time" we were told. So any esoteric (not plainly written) teaching that leads us so far away from the actual written scripture (exoteric teaching) should be seriously examined and critiqued, as we're doing here.
When the apostles in Jerusalem told Paul to "remember the poor" did he reply, "I'm not here for that. I'm here for the high peaks of the divine economy"? No, he said he was "eager to do it". So, maybe THAT was the divine economy, to Paul? At the very least, the "pieces of the puzzle" ask us to consider it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
But worse than that, when Paul wrote those few verses in which the term "God's economy" appears (in some translations), he did not say that God's economy was something to teach. Rather it was the result of the collection of healthy teachings. So God's economy is not the source of how to teach, or what to teach, but is what comes from whatever is profitably taught. In other words, God's economy is a very broad thing that encompasses everything that derives rightly from the teachings of the word of God. It is not a limiter by which the word of God is straight-jacketed into some narrowly-defined thing (falsely) labeled "God's economy."
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This point is actually crucial. 1 Timothy doesn't say, "Teach God's economy" but "teach things that result in God's economy" Healthy teachings bring profitable behaviours.
What are good behaviours? "Give to those who cannot repay you in this age, and your reward will be great in heaven". This giving today, with expectation of reward in the resurrection of the righteous, is "in faith", as Paul says: "God's economy, which is in faith." If you look at this kind of repeated, open teaching in the gospels, and see it carried out by the apostles in the Book of Acts, you do see a pattern. Again, look at the "daily dispensing" in Acts 6:1; look at Paul and Barnabas' "dispensing" in Acts 12:25. Etc.
Suddenly, James' plain, 'exoteric' prescription that true religion is to visit widows and orphans in their afflictions doesn't look all that "low". And Witness Lee's esoteric derivations, while perhaps not untrue in and of themselves, don't seem like the "central lane of the divine economy", as one LSM cheerleader (BP) used to sell it.