Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Witness Lee on the four in one God:
Ultimately, the church is a group of people who are in union with the Triune God and are mingled with the Triune God. The Triune God and the church are four-in-one. Because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all one with the Body of Christ, we may say that the Triune God is now the “four-in-one God.” These four are the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Body.
A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing p.203-204 |
Thanks, Unregistered, for supplying some of Lee's teachings on the four-in-one God.
One thing that struck me about the excerpts was that they were chock full of Lee's specialized language - mingling, incorporation, God's economy, expansion, reproduction, corporate, processed, consummated.
The Bible doesn't speak this way. It says "I in you and you in Me". It says "that they all may be one even as we are one". Lee created a whole new language that took a lot of liberties with the simply-stated concepts in the Word. When he strings all the special vocabulary together, he produces something not found in scripture!
I don't have time to go through all the excerpts at once, but let's look at the first one, quoted above. My main question is going to be "where does the Bible ever talk about a four-in-one God?"
Read Paul's writings. There is one God and Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ. Is there EVER a time when a single apostle, Jesus, or any other disciple speaks of or makes the slightest reference to a future "four-in-one" God? I mean, anywhere?
Jesus' prayer is that we would be one. In what way? Just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. And also that we would be in both the Son and the Father. This does not describe "mingling". It describes things that are in each other. To say this is a "mingled" situation takes it past what scripture says.
The Son and the Father are one and are in each other. But they are still a Son and a Father. The Son doesn't become the Father and the Father doesn't become the Son. As believers, we are in God and God is in us, but God does not become us and we do not become God. "Mingling" blurs the distinction between Creator and creation, and that's not something the Bible does.
To be fair, the sentence right after this excerpt Lee states, "The three of the Divine Trinity cannot be confused or separated, and the four-in-one also cannot be separated or confused." But with these kinds of statements, Lee has elevated us to the status of the Godhead, while simultaneously saying "not in the Godhead". Many of his teachings are self-contradictory one place from the other.
A few sentences later Lee says the "Father....continually dispenses Himself into us." This is, literally, meaningless. Where on earth does the Bible say God "dispenses Himself" into us?
To be "one with God" or to be "in God" or to have God in you
does not mean that you are now God. Witness Lee says "we may say that the Triune God is now the four-in-one God". But look, the Triune God, or three-in-one God, is usually described as the Father, Son, and Spirit each being fully God. To parallel that and say that we are now the four-in-one-God necessarily implies that we are also now fully God. Hopefully I don't have to explain why this is heresy.
Sorry, but Witness Lee or anyone may say whatever they want to say, but if Scripture doesn't also say it, they are wrong! To be one with God means you are one with God. You are you, and God is God, and you are one with Him. To be in God means you are in God. Neither of these things mean you are "part of a four-in-one God".
I eat chicken sometimes. Does the chicken being inside me mean I am "part of a two-in-one chicken"? This is Lee's logic here.