[OBW]

DistantStar,

(First, I must admit that my Freudian slip would be to call you DarkStar, referring to a song by CSN back in the 70s.)

The Lord's economy, or "God's Economy" is taken heavily from the opening verses in 1 Timothy. Specifically 3 & 4. If you read the opening chapter of his book on the subject, Lee mentions no other verse and argues a peculiar meaning that is essentially not taken by any other. And he uses some tricks of argumentation to stop the listener/reader from questioning his certainty of position. For example, he says something like "a thorough investigation of the entire Bible will reveal that . . . ." Of course, no one is going to actually do such an investigation. And he has hinted that he has done it. And declared that it will reveal his answer. So you either go along or you have to start into just such an investigation.

In the realm of logical discussion, his method is designed to provide no actual information but suggest that the requirements to contradict are so difficult as to be impossible, thus shutting off debate. The astute arguer will simply reject such an assertion and ask for actual evidence that it is so.

On top of that, Lee takes the two verses in which Paul says (in so many words) stop certain ones from preaching garbage which results in problems rather than resulting in "God's economy." (Whether you like the term "economy," it is one of the reasonable words into which it is translated.) But that means that A results in B while C (unmentioned but implied) results in D. Garbage teachings result in problems (A --> B) while good teachings result in God's economy (C --> D). The issue at hand is teachings. You can presume which kind of teachings based on what they produce.

The "problems" are not the garbage teachings (not saying that the teachings are not problems, but that they are not their own result) but are the result of the garbage teachings. And God's economy is not the good teachings, but the result of them.

Yet Lee then insists that the thing that should be taught is "God's economy." He then declares that it is simply God dispensing himself into man (what the thorough investigation was about) and says that is what should be taught. In other words, the C --> D structure is invalid and Paul's parallelism is destroyed. Good teachings don't result in God's economy. The only good teachings are God's economy. And they produce something else.

But that isn't what Paul said. So no matter how much some of us may still like some things about the whole "God's economy" teaching, it was created through a serious mishandling of scripture. (by a master mishandler, IMO)

If you are on board with him, then turn to chapters 2 and following and you will get "enlightened." But if you are not on board, those chapters wills start to fall apart. I started looking at the first chapter when someone started quoting from a much later chapter to try to support some Lee/LCM construct that was just too crazy to buy (at this point in time). Did that open my eyes to the way Lee worked. (I have to admit that my reading of Lee's works prior to that were almost always quick scans. Lee was hard to read and didn't really do much for me.)

And given that the rest (of The Economy of God) is somewhat a house of cards, even if he got some of it from TAS, I doubt that the things that were emphasized to us were actually from TAS because I don't think TAS taught that kind of nonsense.