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Originally Posted by OBW
But it is coupled with open criticism of any kind of benevolence to the elderly, homeless, etc., therefore is part of a larger context.
Just sending people to college campuses to preach the gospel is not a problem. But to say that it is a waste of time to go trying to pursue others (in so many words) and to ignore what the Bible calls "justice" gives it that larger context in which there is a general error in emphasis.
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I've not personally heard any denigration towards preaching the gospel to the elderly and the homeless but I agree that the focus is on the campuses. For example, my LC creates "brothers' houses" and "sisters' houses" for campus students but never for the elderly and homeless.
Alas, truth be told, it's a survival strategy for many evangelical churches. It is true that LCs, or at least the LCs that I know, do not in general fulfil the sadiq/sedeqah (justice/righteousness) corollary of the gospel, the same can be said of many, many evangelical and fundamentalist churches. If we are unprepared to accuse these of preaching another gospel, we must also be slow in affirming that LC teaches a different gospel.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Since the text is a little terse here, I am not sure what you are saying. But if you are suggesting that the 75 scholars would have left the LCM alone if they had not sued Harvest House and made such a huge fuss about the evils of denominations, you are probably right. Just like they mostly leave a lot of even more truly heretical groups alone outside of their internal teaching and preaching. Groups like even the JWs.
But since the LCM was busy making a spectacle of itself in the public eye through its lawsuits and openly critical remarks concerning things that are generally considered either benign or truly correct, they did speak up. They did not choose to dig into more of the LCM's errors than was thrust in front of them by the LCM, so a "different gospel" was not on the table. Not sure how they would have responded on that issue. I personally know one of the 75 and am sure that he would not have been flippant with the charge, so if it does not fit, he would have withheld his signature.
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If I have the eminence, these lawsuits alone will have resulted in me putting my signature to the open letter. So I'm all for that. My guess is that many of these scholars have not done anything more than a cursory reading of Lee. But I digress.
So we have to investigate what doctrines they dispute and whether, if they correctly represented Lee's teachings, those misaimed doctrines constitute teaching a different gospel. A fine point on the Trinity (I wonder if anyone ever gets the Trinity right) and another one on anthropology and hamartiology. OK. What will really be teaching another gospel, I suppose, is if some of what Jim Moran said were true. Then LC is a cult.