The Gospel Versus "God's Economy"

[InOmnibusCaritas]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Freedom]

Even though my own experiences aren't indicative of anything, I want to discuss them for a moment. First of all, I spent the better part of my life questioning the salvation and sincerity of Christians outside the LC, and especially those in the RCC. Second of all, I have always had the fear that if I didn't live my life according the LC standards, "outer darkness" was imminent. Such notions didn't come out of nowhere. Whether or not these are common held beliefs in the LC, I don’t know. Regardless, when I come to this issue of whether Lee and the LCM teach another gospel, I have to consider how I viewed things throughout my LC experience.

I don’t have a definite position as to whether the Lee did or the LCM does teach another gospel, but what I want to do here is to address some of the things that could lead me to believe that they teach another gospel.

The following are points of concern to me that come to mind about the gospel that Lee taught:
• Lee consistently de-emphasized salvation as an event and overemphasized salvation as a process.
• Lee instilled doubt as to what kind of gospel “other” Christians believe in.

Lee’s teaching on “God’s full salvation” is a subject in and of itself, but one concept that got ingrained in me was that initial salvation is somewhat insignificant. The thing that is important to those in the LC is reaching “full salvation”. I feel that there is danger to the notion that initial salvation is in any way insignificant. Now, it’s not for me to say how many in the LC actually feel that is the case, but it’s certainly a view I’ve encountered.

Regarding Lee’s teaching on the “low” and “high” gospel, I found some quotes that are insightful into his views. I don’t think that these quotes lead to any particular conclusion, however, I can see an argument being made either way. First of all, Lee did admit that the gospel Christians preach is the gospel:

We should not preach the shallow gospel that Christianity preaches... Although this is the gospel, it is a low gospel...

A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing, ch 2, pp. 29-30

It’s good that Lee admits that the gospel that Christians preach is the gospel, however he is quick to qualify it as a “shallow” or “low” gospel. He says “we should not preach the shallow gospel”. I would ask the question, what about the “shallow gospel” should we not preach? If Lee really did have something better than just the plain ol’ gospel, wouldn’t an understanding of the basic of the gospel still be necessary? Not according to Lee. That is of concern to me, because if the basic message of the gospel is neglected, then it makes me wonder what Lee thinks should be preached? Is he saying to skip over the fundamentals completely, or just to de-emphasize them?

Here is another quote of Lee on the “low gospel”:

However, most Christians today preach a low gospel, telling others, "You have no peace or joy, and you will perish in hell, but God loves you and has been merciful to you. Now you must believe in Him to have peace and joy to go to heaven." This is today's poor, low gospel, a gospel without any glory.

A General Sketch of the New Testament in the Light of Christ and the Church, ch 1, p. 8

Here Lee calls the “low gospel” a “poor gospel”. The word poor can be defined as: of a low or inferior standard or quality. Is this how Lee really intended to describe the gospel that all Christians believe in? An “inferior” gospel? A “low quality” gospel? This is opposite to how Paul describes the gospel in 1 Tim 1:1, where calls it “the glorious gospel”. Lee, on the other hand, essentially says that the gospel Christians believe in is “a gospel without any glory”. Obviously, the implication is that only the “high gospel” that Lee teaches is a glorious gospel.

Here Lee uses a different adjective to describe the “low gospel”:

and we will not speak the superficial and low gospel, but we will be able to speak God's economy, which is mysterious and high.

Being Up-to-date for the Rebuilding of the Temple, ch 13, p. 148

The fact that Lee describes what he calls the “low gospel” as being superficial is concerning to me. Superficial can be taken to be meant “shallow”, but another definition is as follows: appearing to be true or real only until examined more closely. This brings up the question, did Lee really view the “low gospel” as something shallow, or did he possibly see it as something along the lines of a fake/false gospel? His statement could be taken either way, especially by someone like me who wasn’t there to understand the context in which it was spoken. At any rate, to imply that anyone who isn’t in the LC is following or hearing a “superficial” gospel should be a point of concern. The word superficial has strong implications.

Finally, here is one last quote of Lee on the “low gospel”:

Today the educational standard in Taiwan is high. If you preach the gospel only of going to heaven and not going to hell, people will not be interested. This kind of preaching can frighten the very old and the very young. In this age you cannot preach this kind of low gospel. This does not mean that the Bible does not speak of heaven and hell, but that people today do not need this...

The Full Knowledge of the Word of God, ch1, p. 13

Here Lee says the “low gospel” may frighten certain people (?!?!?) and he also says that “In this age you cannot preach this kind of low gospel… people do not need this”. Did he intend to say that people only need his version of the gospel? His statement can be taken to mean that he thought preaching the basic gospel is unnecessary, or not something people really need. Also, the way Lee classifies the gospel that other Christians preach is an oversimplification of the gospel that other Christians preach. He think that other Christians are only concerned with heaven and hell. That is absolutely a false statement. This leads to the question of what exactly he feels is “better” than the gospel that all Christians accept? Is it his teaching on God’s economy? Is it what he calls “God’s full salvation”? There are a lot of unanswered questions.

My main concern is whether or not Lee really felt that his "high gospel" was necessary to really have a genuine form of salvation. Obviously, each of these statements was spoken in a different context which I do not fully understand. I don't want to come to any hasty conclusions, but I do feel that any of these statements that Lee made should be cause for concern as to what he actually believed was the gospel.

[Amcasci]

Now that is some eye opening stuff! It not only sounds like "another gospel" it sounds a bit like Gnosticism and of course only Lee's teaching can initiate you into the realm of the true gospel.

[InOmnibusCaritas]

Yes, thank you, Freedom. Finally we have something central to this topic to really chew on

Originally Posted by Freedom

The following are points of concern to me that come to mind about the gospel that Lee taught:
• Lee consistently de-emphasized salvation as an event and overemphasized salvation as a process.
• Lee instilled doubt as to what kind of gospel “other” Christians believe in.

I think what is in view here is "God's Complete Salvation", which is an update on "God's Full Salvation". Let's discuss this in detail.

"Salvation as an event" and "salvation as a process" will be what Witness Lee calls "judicial redemption" and "organic salvation" respectively. "Judicial redemption" is Lee's equivalent to "penal substitution atonement" (PSA) and does not require more elaboration.

"Organic salvation" consists of the following steps or groups of steps:

1. Regeneration (the end result of judicial redemption)
2. Renewing of the mind
3. Sanctification
4. Transformation
5. Conformation
6. Glorification

Renewing, sanctification, and transformation concern the soul and happens concurrently.

I'm not quite sure even after reading Lee what he understands as conformation ontologically. At any rate, the Bible verse used to underpin this step is Rom. 8:29. I suppose what he meant is that renewing, sanctification, and transformation results in being conformed to the image of Christ.

Glorification is for the physical body when the Lord comes back as per 1 Cor. 15.

This process is "organic" in terms of growth towards maturity.

Stripped down, this model is not very different from the very, very, very standard Western model of regeneration --> sanctification --> glorification. All that Lee did was to split sanctification into three aspects and have them merged into conformation before glorification on that day.

What Lee did was to accuse Christianity of having abandoned the full truth of salvation and dumbed it down to "going to heaven/hell". To a large extent Lee was correct, especially given the televangelism of the 80s. So Lee said he "recovered" God's complete salvation although the truth is that it was never really lost but only very few people have access to it. The man in the pew doesn't know it. All he knows is that he believes in Jesus and is waiting to go to heaven. This, Lee calls the "low gospel". Thus, Lee was simply parroting the millennia old "deification (or, glorification) is the goal of soteriology".

All over evangelical Christianity, people are now talking about what happens after initial redemption.

A lay thought can be found here: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/...-not-a-formula

A recent PhD thesis:
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/219/1/BCB_C...nal.pdf?DDD32+

This is actually state-of-the-art contemporary discourse in certain quarters of evangelical Christianity. I was actually encouraged by a couple of lecturers who knew my LC background to do my post-graduate studies on deification as the goal of soteriology from a Johannine perspective but I am not all that interested in that topic. What I'm saying is: this is quite standard and not all that revolutionary. No scholars will bat an eye.