RJHinds Identifies Witness Lee's "False Teaching"

Originally posted by sonship
I noticed that you have not yet identified any false teaching from Witness Lee.

Your only doctrinal objection has been about the trinity.
In the mean time there's second opinions out here.

[quote] [b] Scholars Who Affirm the Working Together of the Three of the Divine Trinity

A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “O ...[text shortened]... //www.contendingforthefaith.org/responses/Geisler-Rhodes/scholars-on-coworking-of-the-Three.html

Originally posted by RJHinds
The way I understand it, there were a few doubtful or missing portions and the the Latin Vulgate was used as a check and to help fill in missing portions of text. Anyway we have many other versions that include all the text and I compare them to determine if any text might have been left out during copying.

I have already checked out the NWT of the Watc ...[text shortened]... re some deliberate manipulation and deceptive translating performed by the Watchtower folks too.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
Nonsense, you can check our translation with any Greek base text, like the Westcort and Hort or Nestle Aland, can you tell us what Greek base texts were used for the King James version so that we can ascertain its accuracy?

Originally posted by RJHinds
I have no objection to that. I object to Witness Lee's false teachings, including the Gap theory of Watchman Nee. 😏

I have no objection to that. I object to Witness Lee's false teachings, including the Gap theory of Watchman Nee.

Originally posted by sonship

I have no objection to that. I object to Witness Lee's false teachings, including the Gap theory of Watchman Nee.

I don't think you are being exactly forthright.
The history of us arguing about this is pretty much as follows.

Months ago you accused Witness Lee of being a cult leader.
By far the MAIN objection you had was matters ...[text shortened]... and the Trinity were wrong. And you shift your main concern to Gap Theory.

I have to go now.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I haven't shifted my complaint. I just added another one. 😏

Originally posted by sonship
Stop grinning and lying.
You SHIFTED.

You just said you had no problem with the intricate matters of the Father being present in the Son's living and working, which is ALL Witness Lee emphasized.

IE. "I have no problem with this. My problem is about the Gap Theory."

Come on. Don't take us for fools here.
And what makes Christians believing ...[text shortened]... yway, every Christian not going along with Ussher's young earth chronology is not a cult member.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I had been against Witness Lee's Modalism heresy.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I had been against Witness Lee's Modalism heresy.

For we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh, (Phil. 3:3)

If you can understand the Trinity thoroughly and define it adequately, it is no longer a mystery. In the realm of mathematics or chemistry, things can be scientifically analyzed by the human mind. That is science, not mystery. If you can use your supposedly clever mind to understand the Triune God, He is no longer a mystery. Because none of us can understand the Trinity adequately, it remains a mystery. Do not ask me why. I do not know why. I can only say, “The Bible tells us so.” Do not argue; just take the pure Word of God." (Witness Lee, The Truth Concerning the Trinity, chapter 1, p. 1 Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA, U.S.A.)

"To try and analyze the Triune God is like using a dipper to measure the ocean!"

"Try to explain this truth of the Trinity and you could lose your mind, but try and explain it away and you could lose your soul!"

This matter of the Father, Son, and Spirit—the Trinity of the Godhead—is one which we cannot use our mind to comprehend...If you follow your mental understanding you will be puzzled, but by your experience you are clear that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are the three Persons of the one God...The Triune God is for our experience and enjoyment. God as a Trinity is for His economy, that is, for the dispensing of Himself into us to be our life and our everything.

My understanding of the the Divine Trinity is simple on God as a person. not to mention their distinctions, coinherence, perichoresis, interpenetration, identification, interchangeable, and coexsitence.

God is understood a living Person but it's entirely different from Oneness theology.

When we say that God is a “person,” we do not mean that He is a human being. We mean that God possesses “personality” and that He is a rational Being with self-awareness. Theologians often define person as “an individual being with a mind, emotions, and a will.” God definitely has an intellect (Psalm 139:17), emotions (Psalm 78:41), and volition (1 Corinthians 1:1). So, yes, God is a person.
Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/is-God-a-person.html#ixzz3bJjPU5XR

Yet this is not the whole truth of the matter. We do assert that God, that is, the whole Godhead, is one person…. Over against all other beings, that is, over against created beings, we must therefore hold that God’s being presents an absolute numerical identity. And even within the ontological Trinity we must maintain that God is numerically one. He is one person. When we say that we believe in a personal God we do not merely mean that we believe in a God to whom the adjective "personality" may be attached. God is not an essence that has personality…
Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1961), p. 229.

The revelation of the Triune God can be found throughout the New Testament. In Matthew 28:19, the Lord Jesus charged the disciples to baptize the nations "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." In this verse, name is singular in number, yet the one name refers to three persons. This shows that there is one name for the Divine Trinity (see notes 5 and 6 on Matthew 28:19 in the Recovery Version). The word person is often used to describe the three of the Divine Trinity, yet we must be careful in using such a term…

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three separate persons or three Gods; they are one God, one reality, one person. Hence, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are denoted by one name. The name denotes the person, and the person is the reality of the name. The name of the Divine Trinity is the sum total of the divine Being, equivalent to His person. God is triune; that is, He is three-one. In some theological writings, the preposition in is added between three and one to make three-in-one. However, it is more accurate to say that God is three-one.
Witness Lee, The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1996), p. 48.

Geisler and Rhodes write:

...God as a Person should be taken to refer to the Godhead overall as a tri-personal being...

…the Scriptures proceed in the presentation of the nature and character of God. He is a Person with those faculties and constituent elements which belong to personality.
Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947), p. 180.

The definition of a person—that is, a knowing, willing, acting I—can have the meaning only of a confession of the person of God declared in His revelation, of the One who loves and who as such (living in His own way) is the person.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II:1: The Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 284.

If God is a living, conscious being who knows, wills, and acts—if, in a word, God is a person—then God is not a property or state of affairs or set or proposition or any other abstract object.
Alvin Plantinga, The Analytic Theist, James F. Sennett, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 239.

The Bible says that God is a person and this is absolutely vital to any true sense of worship, and to our having a feeling of confidence about ourselves and about the world….

But there is a great deal of direct evidence for saying that God is a person. Have you noticed how the presence of God is always described in a personal way? Take the name of God that we have considered: ‘I am’, that is a personal statement, it is a person who can say, ‘I am,’ and God says that He speaks of Himself in this manner. Every single representative of God has declared that God is a person and not simply an unconscious force.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), pp. 55-56.

Not only is God a spirit, but He also is a person—that is, He has personality, just as we do. Every trait we attribute to ourselves can be attributed to God. A person feels, thinks, desires, and decides—and so does God. A person enters into relationships—and so does God. A person acts—and so does God. God feels; God thinks; God sympathizes; God forgives; God hopes; God decides; God acts; God judges—all because He is a person. If He weren’t why pray to Him or worship Him? God is not an impersonal force or power; He is a person—the most perfect person imaginable.
Billy Graham, The Journey: How to Live by Faith in an Uncertain World (Nashville, TN: W. Publishing Group, 2006), p. 20.

Personhood is traditionally understood as one who has intellect, feelings, and will…. Essentially, personhood refers to an "I," a "who," or a subject… Personhood itself is its I-ness or who-ness.
Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), p. 279.

Yahweh, however, only refers to the one true God. No other person or thing was to be worshiped or served (Exod. 20:5), and his name and glory were not to be given to another.
Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 129. Nearly the exact same statement is made in Norman L. Geisler and A. Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), p. 250; and Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), p. 280.

A person is a conscious being—someone who thinks, feels, and purposes, and carries those purposes into action. A person engages in active relationships with other people. You can talk to a person and get a response. You can share feelings and ideas with him. You can argue with him, love him, and even hate him.

Surely by this definition God must be understood as a person.
Ron Rhodes, The Heart of Christianity (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1996), p. 43.

However, we do find that in the Bible “God” also speaks in the singular. For example,

Gen. 1:29, “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth . . . '”
Exodus 3:14, “And God said unto Moses, ‘I AM THAT I AM’: and he said, ‘Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.’”

This is not a contradiction between God being expressed as one person and being a Trinity of persons. The totality of the Godhead as a Trinity can certainly speak as one.

So, can God be said to be a person? Yes. And how do we tell if He is a person? We simply look at the requirements of being a person, such as speaking, being aware of others, having a will, loving, etc.; and we see that God most certainly expresses the attributes of personhood.
https://carm.org/is-god-a-person

Norman Geisler’s Position Contradicts the Bible

According to Geisler’s published writings, it is improper to speak of God as "one person," as "a person," or even as "personal" in any kind of singular sense.This position attempts to enforce an external standard of "orthodoxy" on the truth revealed in the Bible. Thus, when Geisler cites the formula "one essence, three Persons" or "one nature, three Persons," he imposes on those words a narrow and exclusive meaning that attempts to codify the mystery of the nature of the Triune God:

By saying God has one essence and three persons it is meant that he has one "What" and three "Whos." The three Whos (persons) each share the same What (essence). So God is a unity of essence with a plurality of persons. Each person is different, yet they share a common nature.
Geisler’s explanation is itself a contradiction. Immediately after he says God has "one essence and three persons," he refers to God with the singular personal pronoun "he."

The problem, as the theologians cited in this article attest, is that Geisler’s definition does not answer the fundamental question of what the oneness among the three Persons is. It is not the expressions "one nature, three Persons" or "one essence, three Persons" that are objectionable; in fact, as noted above, Witness Lee used these terms often. Rather, what is not acceptable is the dogmatic insistence upon these terms as a formula that is adequate to fully express the mystery of the Triune God without any of the qualifiers which theologians throughout the centuries have recognized as necessary because of the limitations of human language. Both essence and nature are commonly understood as something abstract and impersonal, yet that does not describe what our God is. Millard Erickson rightly pointed out the same error that is evident in Geisler’s statement:

God is a unitary being. Sometimes one gets the conception that the nature of God is a bundle of attributes, somewhat loosely tied together. God, however, is not an attribute or a predicate. He is a living person, a subject.

While Geisler’s distinction between "what" and "who" makes for a tidy formula, it does not match the revelation in the Bible. The Bible repeatedly refers to God as "I," "Me," "He," and "Him." These are personal pronouns and it would be inappropriate to apply them to some abstract essence or nature or to a "what." Genesis 1:26-27 says, "And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Here the pronoun referring to God switches from the plural "Us" and "Our" to the singular "He" and "His," but it is always used in the sense of a person speaking and acting.

In Exodus God referred to Himself as the "I Am": "And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And He said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you." In Exodus 20:2-3 Jehovah instructed the children of Israel, "I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the slave house; you shall have no other gods before Me." Here God refers to Himself with a singular personal pronoun. In fact, as the I am, God is not only a person; He is the Person. The inescapable conclusion is that either the Bible is wrong in referring to God as a person or Geisler is wrong.

Matthew 28:19 is one of the clearest revelations of the Trinity. It says, "Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Here the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have one name. The word for "name" in this verse is the singular form of the same word that is used in Acts 1:15 in the plural form for "persons."25 According to Matthew 28:19, baptizing people into "the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" is not merely a formula to be recited at baptisms but an act of immersing those who have believed into and received Christ into the reality of the divine Person of the Triune God. This is why in his footnote on "name" in Matthew 28:19 in the Recovery Version of the New Testament, Witness Lee commented:

There is one name for the Divine Trinity. The name is the sum total of the Divine Being, equivalent to His person. To baptize someone into the name of the Triune God is to immerse him into all that the Triune God is.
http://www.contendingforthefaith.org/responses/Geisler-Rhodes/Persons-as-test-of-orthodoxy.html#_edn36[/b]

Originally posted by kevinlee123

The revelation of the Triune God can be found throughout the New Testament. In Matthew 28:19, the Lord Jesus charged the disciples to baptize the nations "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." In this verse, name is singular in number, yet the one name refers to three persons. This shows that there is one name for the Divine Trinity (see notes 5 and 6 on Matthew 28:19 in the Recovery Version)...

This is not a contradiction between God being expressed as one person and being a Trinity of persons. The totality of the Godhead as a Trinity can certainly speak as one. — Matt Slick

We have Watchman Nee, Witness Lee , KevinLee, when is Bruce Lee gonna show up and kick some butt? Hopefully soon.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
We have Watchman Nee, Witness Lee , KevinLee, when is Bruce Lee gonna show up and kick some butt? Hopefully soon.