Quote:
Originally Posted by Renee
Could you give the reference to where WL said "fallen human concepts" were mixed in the writing of the Bible.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
And Lee did this in spades. Look for the many times that he said the writer was expressing "complex sentiments", i.e. "fallen human concepts" were being mixed with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit..
|
I googled "Witness Lee complex sentiments" and the first page had four citations, all from his study of the Psalms. I went into this in some detail in the thread entitled "The Psalms are the Word of Christ", in the "Apologetic discussions" section of this forum.
I'll try to recap: the NT clearly says that all scripture is God-breathed and profitable; Jesus said that man doesn't live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God; the apostle wrote that the prophets were given words inspired by the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:21). Nowhere do I see the corollary warning us to stay away from the "low" or "fallen" parts of scripture, written by sinners according to their "natural concepts". And the Psalms were heavily cited in the NT, as you're probably aware. Yet WL waved them off almost in toto, except where NT usage forced him to accede them as "revelatory of God's Christ." Even then, as in First Peter's quote of "all flesh is like grass" (1:24) he might dismiss it as "natural."
Instead, WL recommended to us "the heart of the divine revelation"; i.e. Paul's epistles to Ephesus, Galatia, Colossae, and Philippi. Look at the footnotes there. One Bible verse might get a page of small print notes from him. Yet Paul in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 recommended singing Psalms, calling them "the words of Christ" and saying that you'd be "filled in Spirit" by so doing. What, isn't Paul's recommendation in "the heart of the divine revelation" not good enough? Or has it been subsumed by today's oracle?
The Psalms were compiled in a specific manner. There's a narrative structure, which can be at least faintly discerned. Psalm 1 talks about the man who loves the word of God and meditates upon it day and night. Like a tree planted by streams of water, giving fruit in season, whose leaf doesn't wither (see e.g. allusions in Revelation to the tree planted by the crystal river, giving fruit each month, whose leaves heal the nations). This is contrasted to the wicked, the scoffers and the mockers, whose fate is utter rejection.
This message seems to resonate quite well with Deuteronomy 17 which says that the King of Israel should have such a relation with God's word. And Psalm 2 confirms this, by saying that God has placed His Anointed (Gk:
"Christos") on His holy mountain, and given Him all rule and authority and power. Strong messianic overtones, no? This passage is of course cited heavily in the NT.
But WL's footnotes said that there was a kind of dissonance going on - Psalm 1 was "natural" and Psalm 2 was "revelatory" and so forth. He basically dismissed 3/4 of the 2000 + verses of the Psalms as of no value, except to show people "in their natural minds and not in their regenerated human spirits". So who in the Local Churches wants to pursue Christ in the Psalms, outside of Lee's scanty notes and minimal permissions? And were the compilers of the Psalms really so deluded? And where in the NT reception of Psalms, 40+ citations by my count, do we get permission to think this way?
I'll continue my argument in another post.