NIGEL TOMES: LSM’s ‘Authority & Submission’ Tampers with the Trinity

[Drake]

Originally Posted by OBW

Provide an example for our consideration. Otherwise your comment is without actual point. Just a generic claim with no substance.

Generic perhaps but not without substance.

I'm glad you asked because I was willing to let it go at that thinking it might just be me. But since you forced me to think about it.....

Like the articles found in the Washington Post I know a hit piece when I read one. I have seen many hit pieces from the economic professor Tomes and this is but another one of his twisted weaves.

And there is merit to looking at the forest and not just the trees. For example, a view of the forest in this case is taking EFS and the heretical implications of it and then slapping that label on Watchman Nee without ever proving Watchman Nee embraced EFS. Then he quotes someone who argues that anyone who believes in EFS must be a heretic because the essential Trinity would be changed and yet he never proves that the economical Trinity is limited to the starting point of incarnation or time. Then he makes it sound as if his sources are addressing Watchman Nee directly but he did not show that either. He also tees up Witness Lee to appear to disagree with Watchman Nee's view on authority and submission but explains this through innuendo as if there were problems with it.

And then of course, he never provides a comparison of authority and submission teachings but prefers to take the easy way out by simply dismissing it and thereby apparently avoiding aN obvious universal truth. Does anyone who believes in God think this does not exist outside of the economical Trinity? On this point he apparently has views as applied to gender relationships but doesn't develop this to prove the point. Maybe he knows what a landmine looks like and prefers to sidestep it. He never explains his personal view in this article on that point, maybe elsewhere.

This type of thinking works for economics with so many variables that most things need not and cannot be proven, just argued and so the adage that if you stack all the economists end to end they would never reach agreement. Yet, this does not work so well for theological dissertations. I'm sure Dr. Tomes is a genius in his field of training but not this one.

Anyway, his papers look authentic and educational but when you step back and look at the forest, and not just circular path he takes the reader on, through the bramble bushes, across the creek, up the cliff, over hill, over dale then a twisted matrix of trails emerge seemingly related but not necessary parts of a whole.

But that is just my "generic" view.

Having said that I am certain that this article will be a big hit here. Most will scarf it up!

Thanks for asking.

Drake

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Drake

Generic perhaps but not without substance.

I'm glad you asked because I was willing to let it go at that thinking it might just be me. But since you forced me to think about it.....

Like the articles found in the Washington Post I know a hit piece when I read one. I have seen many hit pieces from the economic professor Tomes and this is but another one of his twisted weaves.

But that is just my "generic" view.

Having said that I am certain that this article will be a big hit here. Most will scarf it up!

Thanks for asking.

Drake

The closest thing I know to the Washington Post is all the "hit pieces" on afaithfulworddotcom during the quarantines of Titus Chu, Nigel Tomes, etc.

LSM invented FAKE NEWS even before WaPo, NYT, and the MSM made it popular.

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Drake

Generic perhaps but not without substance.

I'm glad you asked because I was willing to let it go at that thinking it might just be me. But since you forced me to think about it.....

Like the articles found in the Washington Post I know a hit piece when I read one. I have seen many hit pieces from the economic professor Tomes and this is but another one of his twisted weaves.

And there is merit to looking at the forest and not just the trees. . . .

I would agree that sometimes there is something in the forest that is not seen tree-by-tree.

But when you are trying to determine the value of something as significant as the line of reasoning that Nee used to put A&S/SA into the Christian landscape, it is worthwhile to actually see where he starts and how he goes through it. If you simply note that it seems spiritual, or that it "hangs together," that might not be enough. I did some significant review of the first couple of chapters several years ago and came to see that if you just brush through the first chapters and accept the little that they say as true, the rest follows. But if you take the time to ask whether that little in the first chapters is actually sound (logically, grammatically, spiritually, biblically, etc.) there were some problems that had to be overcome to continue on to the rest of it. And without those chapters and their groundwork, you never get to rest.

Besides, when you insist on viewing it from 40,000 feet, you miss that there are details that just aren't quite right. Like declaring that no one had the position to complain or do anything about certain persons because they had some "position." Only God could deal with them. That is simply not true. The Bible is full of stands against that.

But if you start by agreeing that the declaration that there is "authority and submission" in the verses in chapter 1 of the book, then you have bought Nee's false word substitution.

And it is in the trees. You need to show why the first chapter is even correct before you get to the rest. It is because authority and submission is given such a high and lofty place that Nee goes on to chapter 2. And then what is in chapter 2 is so important that you can now go on to chapter 3. If you are just taking it all in isolation without any critical thinking, then it probably is cohesive and has a good "forest" kind of effect. But when you start at the entrance to the forest and find pine beetles attacking the pines, and labels on the Aspens declaring them to be White Oak, then you begin to wonder if you are following a marine biologist on a fact-finding trip through the woods. He may make it all fit together and look pretty, but it is full of factual errors. He may think the beetles are simply symbiotic with the trees. And that anything with a white bark is a White Oak.

And that coconuts are migratory.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Drake

Having said that I am certain that this article will be a big hit here. Most will scarf it up!

Not me. Although I like to agree with Dr. Tomes, I don't always.

Actually, I didn't read the article until today. I was more interested in the discussion about Noah.

Let me say, if I understand Tome's argument, I think it is a stretch. In the first place, I'm not sure I don't believe in EFS. In the second, even if it EFS is true that doesn't necessarily support Lee's authority model anyway.

And I disagree with argument that says if EFS is true that boils down to that the Son has a different essence than the Father. The fact is, that there is a Father and Son shows they are in some way different. If they are the same in every way then the distinction is completely meaningless. Therefore there must be a difference and that difference must be eternal and essential.

But just what does "essential" mean. Well, as always with the Trinity, it often boils down to subjective registrations of what we think the words used to discuss it mean. We say God is of one "essence" but we think of that essence as a cloud of stuff. But God's essence is not just stuff. In fact, I would argue that the most important part of his essence is something that is very difficult to define. But I guess the closest I can get is to call it a "moral idea in its reality." We say God is love. But is love a stuff? No, love is something that is alive and has a kind of consciousness and moral substance. The same for righteousness, wisdom and relationship.

I think the key to the Trinity is to think of it in terms of relationships rather that "stuff." God has a relationship with himself. Is that one or two? It is both. The Father is God in himself and the Son is God in his image of himself, what he sees when he considers himself. Yet these two have a relationship. So in that relationship the image (Son) can by definition only do what the source (Father) does or tells him to do, because the Father is the origin. Yet since the Son is God's perfect self-image, he is equal to the Father in every single way except for the distinction between the two, and thus not subordinate, but just one.

So just as my self-image is subordinate to me, God's is to him. Yet since my self-image, if I was as moral and psychologically healthy as God, would be exactly me, except for the distinction, so we would be co-equal. I think full salvation will bring us to the consciousness where we regard our self-image in the manner the Father regards the Son. This in the end is "finding your soul."

Anyway, regardless. I don't think either view validates or negates Lee's authority model. His model is wrong because it is not supported by scripture and manifestly always-and-ever produces rotten fruit.

So as the Apostle John wrote: "Remember, the sins of some people are obvious, leading them to certain judgment. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until later." It's the same with doctrines. Some aren't revealed for what they are until they are put into practice. Let's authority model is such a doctrine.

[Cal]

Let me say I do think that one's view of the Trinity does seem to have a far-reaching effect on their view of things. It's really interesting. Or said another way, one's view of life is often reflected in their view of the Trinity.

If you think authority is very important, you might see authority in the Trinity.

If you think oneness is important, you might see oneness in the Trinity.

If you value diversity, you might see that.

I see all three. But more than all those what I see in the Trinity is relationship. To me that is really what it's all about. Relationship is so important that the one God even has relationship within himself.

He values our relationship with him and with each other more than anything. That is why the first and second commandments are love God and love people.

Lee didn't really see this that much I don't think. He valued the oneness of the Trinity, and somewhat discounted the diversity. He never seemed to get however that all of life really about how we relate to three things: God, others and ourselves.

His authority model actually works against that. How many relationships have been broken because Lee's authority model superseded all else?

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Drake

Like the articles found in the Washington Post I know a hit piece when I read one. I have seen many hit pieces from the economic professor Tomes and this is but another one of his twisted weaves.

This type of thinking works for economics with so many variables that most things need not and cannot be proven, just argued and so the adage that if you stack all the economists end to end they would never reach agreement. Yet, this does not work so well for theological dissertations. I'm sure Dr. Tomes is a genius in his field of training but not this one.

Anyway, his papers look authentic and educational but when you step back and look at the forest, and not just circular path he takes the reader on, through the bramble bushes, across the creek, up the cliff, over hill, over dale then a twisted matrix of trails emerge seemingly related but not necessary parts of a whole.

But that is just my "generic" view.

Having said that I am certain that this article will be a big hit here. Most will scarf it up!

Thanks for asking.

Drake

I find it quite amusing that our friend Drake, a regular defender of LSM, would so casually dismiss every single paper penned by Dr. Nigel Tomes, who was a former co-worker in the Lord's Recovery, until that bogus hit piece was authored a decade ago in Whistler quarantining the GLA. I would like to know what part our friend Drake had in those quarantines and excommunications in the GLA, which included the writer Tomes.

Obviously if Tomes' papers were simply fake news "hit jobs" akin to WaPo's numerous pieces on "Russian collusions," then someone with Drake's extensive credentials would not waste his time here on this insignificant "group-think, bitter, cult" forum of ex-LC members.

Actually, Tomes' piece here appeared to be a "dud" to me at first glance, since Trinitarian theological speculations are not my cup of tea. But after Drake took notice, and I looked further into the paper, I now realize that Tomes is now dismantling the entire Recovery construct by taking the axe to the root of their false basis of authority.

Long overdue Nigel!

[ZNPaaneah]

Originally Posted by Ohio

I find it quite amusing that our friend Drake, a regular defender of LSM, would so casually dismiss every single paper penned by Dr. Nigel Tomes, who was a former co-worker in the Lord's Recovery, until that bogus hit piece was authored a decade ago in Whistler quarantining the GLA. I would like to know what part our friend Drake had in those quarantines and excommunications in the GLA, which included the writer Tomes.

Obviously if Tomes' papers were simply fake news "hit jobs" akin to WaPo's numerous pieces on "Russian collusions," then someone with Drake's extensive credentials would not waste his time here on this insignificant "group-think, bitter, cult" forum of ex-LC members.

Actually, Tomes' piece here appeared to be a "dud" to me at first glance, since Trinitarian theological speculations are not my cup of tea. But after Drake took notice, and I looked further into the paper, I now realize that Tomes is now dismantling the entire Recovery construct by taking the axe to the root of their false basis of authority.

Long overdue Nigel!

Good point. WL's teachings condemned hierarchy to the max and yet WN and WL teach that the Triune God is a hierarchy. If we are being replaced molecule by molecule with the Triune God, which is a hierarchy it would stand to reason that the expression of this God, the church, would also be a hierarchy.

Clearly this shows the fundamental hypocrisy in this WL and WN's teaching. If you agree with WL that hierarchy is an expression of fallen Christianity then you have to say he has made a fundamental error in his doctrine of the Trinity.

On the other hand if you agree with WL's teaching on authority and submission then you have to throw out all his teachings condemning Christianity for hierarchy.

Also this paper seems to finally make sense of these verses in Matt 18:

18 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

If you understand this question of "who is greatest" in the context of "Authority and Submission" the Lord's word completely blows a hole in WN and WL's teaching.