Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Well, according to the record, at one point Apollos was only partly in the reality. He taught the baptism of John the Baptist only (Acts ch. 18). And Peter, when he shrank back when some came "from James" (Gal. ch.2) . And the Judaizers were partly there, partly not. And James, perhaps, as well. The fact that church history speaks of an "episcopal throne" set up after James' tenure in Jerusalem, which the flesh family of Jesus was sought to fill (being of the "line of David", and all) speaks to me of some lack. And the hard word of Jesus toward the "messengers" of the Asian assemblies in Revelations 2 and 3 suggests the possiblility of a trend.
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You said a lot in this post, but I only really want to comment on this portion in a general way.
You are quite right to note that there is a deficiency in the cases mentioned. But is it not that they are each in some way clearly out of alignment with the clear words of Christ. I suspect that we don't even need to get into the writings of Paul or others outside of what is recorded in the gospels to find the error in each of these. (I could be wrong as I will not pretend to have done enough research on the subject to make this a claim of certainty.) My point is not that "reality" is not a true or valid thing, but that to the extent that it might be seen as pointing to the error in something, it should also be found that there is scripture that agrees with that position. In other words, I'm not sure that we should accept some view of "reality" if it does not seem to be consistent with scripture.
In Lee's case, there are places where he dismissed scripture because he found it to not be up to his version of "reality," most often in terms of "God's NT economy." I do not see this as a valid use or "reality." If we reverse Lee's lexicon, isn't "reality" equal to truth? "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth." What is truth/reality? The word of God. How then does reality diminish the word of God?