The introduction of leaven

[Suannehill]

By tradition and teaching...leaven is negative in both Christian and Jewish faiths.
We can't avoid leaven on this earth.
As a baker of yeast breads since a child I can tell you that yeast is everywhere. In fact, that's what sourdough bread is...wild yeast...just expose it to the air.
Vinegar is made with wild yeast from the air and don't forget our bodies, some of the most resistant infections are yeast.
So, it's easy to see positive and and negative aspects of yeast.
However, spiritually...yeast is negative.

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Suannehill

By tradition and teaching...leaven is negative in both Christian and Jewish faiths.
We can't avoid leaven on this earth.
As a baker of yeast breads since a child I can tell you that yeast is everywhere. In fact, that's what sourdough bread is...wild yeast...just expose it to the air.
Vinegar is made with wild yeast from the air and don't forget our bodies, some of the most resistant infections are yeast.
So, it's easy to see positive and and negative aspects of
However, spiritually...yeast is negative.

Is there a verse reference that would clear this up? Because I am questioning that conclusion.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Suannehill

By tradition and teaching...leaven is negative in both Christian and Jewish faiths.
We can't avoid leaven on this earth.
As a baker of yeast breads since a child I can tell you that yeast is everywhere. In fact, that's what sourdough bread is...wild yeast...just expose it to the air.
Vinegar is made with wild yeast from the air and don't forget our bodies, some of the most resistant infections are yeast.
So, it's easy to see positive and and negative aspects of yeast.
However, spiritually...yeast is negative.

I don't think it's always negative. Just like birds aren't always negative.

Lee decided the parable of the mustard seed was negative because he thought birds (of the sky) were negative. But that's forcing a meaning on the verse based on another flawed concept. Birds aren't always negative (doves, eagles, sparrows). Take away the idea that birds refer to bad angels and the overwhelming import is that this is a positive parable about the growth of the kingdom from small things.

In the same, way Lee decided that leaven was always negative, and so interpreted the the parable of the leaven negatively. He used the bias against women in the LRC to strengthen this interpretation (a woman hid the leaven!) But the parable of the leaven is likely a positive parable, not a negative one.

This from Smith's Bible Dictionary:

Another quality in leaven is noticed in the Bible, namely, its secretly penetrating and diffusive power. In this respect it was emblematic of moral influence generally, whether good or bad; and hence our Saviour adopts it as illustrating the growth of the kingdom of heaven in the individual heart and in the world at large: because (1) its source is from without; (2) it is secret in its operation; (3) it spreads by contact of particle with particle; (4) it is widely diffusive, one particle of leaven being able to change any number of particles of flour; and because (5) it does not act like water, moistening a certain amount of flour, but is like a plant, changing the particles it comes in contact with into its own nature, with like propagating power.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Igzy

I don't think [leaven] is always negative. Just like birds aren't always negative.

Lee decided the parable of the mustard seed was negative because he thought birds (of the sky) were negative. But that's forcing a meaning on the verse based on another flawed concept. Birds aren't always negative (doves, eagles, sparrows). Take away the idea that birds refer to bad angels and the overwhelming import is that this is a positive parable about the growth of the kingdom from small things.

Interesting. I had also felt that "birds lodging in the branches" of the great mustard plant in Matthew 13 was also indicative of uncleanness invading the kingdom. But a deeper search does not bear this out.

For instance, in the vision of Daniel chapter 4, with the great tree: "Its leaves were beautiful, its fruit abundant, and on it was food for all. Under it the beasts of the field found shelter, and the birds of the air lived in its branches; from it every creature was fed."

The birds, here, do not seem to carry a negative connotation.

Similarly,Revelation 18, about the fall of Babylon, clearly denotes that the birds are unclean, "With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird."

So unless the immediate parable indicates clearly that they are bad, they should not necessarily be understood as that. That is, probably, reading too much into the document. I must look anew at Matthew 13's parables.

Originally Posted by Igzy

In the same, way Lee decided that leaven was always negative, and so interpreted the the parable of the leaven negatively. He used the bias against women in the LRC to strengthen this interpretation (a woman hid the leaven!) But the parable of the leaven is likely a positive parable, not a negative one.

This from Smith's Bible Dictionary:

Another quality in leaven is noticed in the Bible, namely, its secretly penetrating and diffusive power. In this respect it was emblematic of moral influence generally, whether good or bad; and hence our Saviour adopts it as illustrating the growth of the kingdom of heaven in the individual heart and in the world at large: because (1) its source is from without; (2) it is secret in its operation; (3) it spreads by contact of particle with particle; (4) it is widely diffusive, one particle of leaven being able to change any number of particles of flour; and because (5) it does not act like water, moistening a certain amount of flour, but is like a plant, changing the particles it comes in contact with into its own nature, with like propagating power.

But leaven I had felt to be negative in every instance. Spiritually speaking, you know; like Sueannehill said. So Smith's Bible Dictionary is certainly helpful.

Additionally, I really didn't know anything about making bread. My mind went, "Leaven, bad; flour, good", and that was it.... ZNPaaneah's commentary was certainly eye-opening, for me. It connects with Smith's explanation(and, actually, I think "negative" leaven probably works in the same way. Insidiously, quietly, corrupting from within).

Nonetheless, as stated earlier, I can simply strike Matthew 13's parable from the record, and use another reference; something like Paul's clearly negative association in 1 Cor 5:6 -- "Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?"(NIV) -- and leave my question out there.

My sense is that the fact that the Nee/Lee "solution" to "degraded christianity" has ended up arguably worse, points to a deeper, systemic issue at hand than the idea of "one city, one church", which had largely been the model anyway when the RCC dominated the land, pre-Reformation.

So Satan snuck something in, which Nee & Lee with all their "normal, New-Testament-based church" teachings did not purge out at all.

Like I said, they don't call Satan the subtle one for nothing.

[Cal]

The problem I have with Lee's definition of leaven, aron, is that he defined it as mixture. And eventually that meant mixture of an ever-widening array of threatening things with a ever-shrinking base of acceptable things. Eventually, even things such as innocent frivolity and modern music became leaven. Any kind of non-New Way gospel effort was leaven. Pants on women was leaven. The list kept growing.

What it eventually became was paranoia. We lost track of the fact that to the pure all things are pure. Most everything has the potential to be a distraction, but that doesn't mean everything is a distraction. God just isn't that small. Not my God, anyway.

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Igzy

The problem I have with Lee's definition of leaven, aron, is that he defined it as mixture. And eventually that meant mixture of an ever-widening array of threatening things with a ever-shrinking base of acceptable things. Eventually, even things such as innocent frivolity and modern music became leaven. Any kind of non-New Way gospel effort was leaven. Pants on women was leaven. The list kept growing.

What it eventually became was paranoia. We lost track of the fact that to the pure all things are pure. Most everything has the potential to be a distraction, but that doesn't mean everything is a distraction. God just isn't that small. Not my God, anyway.

I still wonder if there are any verses that truly give a negative connotation to leaven.

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

I still wonder if there are any verses that truly give a negative connotation to leaven. There are lots of dietary laws in the OT and never once is it even suggested that things leavened (bread, wine, beer, etc.) have a negative connotation. Also, the fact that they had to purge out the old leaven indicates that leaven was a central commodity in all Jewish homes.

Beware of the leaven is not any different from beware the electric cable, being dangerous is not equivalent with sinful, unclean, or evil. Rather the term old is a decidedly negative term, God is always new. So the issue with purging out the old leaven could be that it was old, not that it was leaven. Likewise beware the leaven of the pharisees could easily be an issue of the Pharisees, not leaven.

[Cal]

Also, I have a problem thinking the Lord might directly call the kingdom of heaven a negative thing. If leaven here is evil, why would the Lord call the kingdom leaven? That's like saying the kingdom is evil. In none of the other parables is the kingdom itself directly called something that is considered evil.

If he had said that the kingdom is like flour which a women mixed with yeast, perhaps then the idea that the leaven was evil might hold up better. But the Lord said the kingdom is like yeast which a woman mixed with flour! Flour is surely positive, right? So if the woman is some evil Jezebel, why is she mixing the good thing into the bad thing, rather than the other way around? And why is the bad thing directly equated with the kingdom?

It just doesn't make sense. Yet, that's what Lee taught.

[aron]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

I still wonder if there are any verses that truly give a negative connotation to leaven.

I have found this online discussion to be both fascinating and informative. I am now thinking that perhaps "leaven" can be both negative or positive, depending on if it is "old" or "new"; whether it is the leaven of Jesus or the Pharisees (to give two specific instances).

In both cases, there is an operating from within, a changing of the nature of what has been entered. Just as "poison" and "antidote" may use similar routes to modify body chemistry.

I thank you, ZNPaaneah, for sharing your ideas on bread-making. I never have paid the slightest attention. To me, "leaven" meant "something bad mixed in and ruining what was once good". This perceptual filter prevented me from reading what the actual text is stating, as OBW warns against. At the same time, I feel that just using a rigid grammatical reading of the immediate text to figure out "what they are saying" is to risk losing much of the depth of the story.

What I now try to do is to ask, what is the common knowledge both the speaker/writer and the recipients of the message would have had, which would give weight to the information? What did the messager want/intend the recipients to get from it?

Many passages have begun to change for me. Let me give two examples. First, I grew up on a farm, and gradually I began to realize that the shared agrarian knowledge base of this people would convey meanings which we might miss today. "My sheep hear My voice -- I call them out by name" carries many subtle associatations if you have ever tended a flock. This is similar to ZNPaaneah's bread-making experience.

Also, the whole reading of Revelation, like Daniel before it, can be colored so much by our view of the historical passage of time that we forget there was an immediate message from writer to reader. Even though the writers were in part referring to "things ... to come" they were doing so from a different knowledge/experience base than we possess today.

So Nee/Lee's use of the "historical lens" to interpret the seven epistles to the messengers of the Asian assemblies, for instance, sidesteps what John/Jesus wanted them to get. I don't think the focus was on the Roman Catholic Church! Or the Reformation, or the Brethren, etc. There were spiritual forces at work which flowed through time and would eventually manifest themselves in diverse ways, but John/Jesus was sending a message to the saints which superseded the passage of time.

And these spiritual forces were often represented by images, just as Daniel had done with his visions and Jesus had done with His parables. So if John was telling his readers about a call to "...birds flying in mid-heaven, coming to feast on the flesh of kings and generals" it was understood that they would use their common knowledge base (which includes daily life but especially includes the preceeding scriptures). And yes, it involves logic as well, and conversation among the assembly.

So I end up agreeing with both ZNPaaneah and OBW. And I am also grateful for the "lens of Lee" which I used for a time, and still remains part of my repertoire. My real quibble with Lee et al is that they thought they were doing a PhD when they were really in fourth grade! I suspect we have a ways to go, and dressing anyone's teachings up as "the high peak" is to get diverted, and stuck.

But I digress, I am sure...